Henry Fuseli: 6 works

'A 'poetic painter', Henry Fuseli focused on the power of dramatic expression and the sublime poetics conveyed in classical texts by Ovid, Homer and Pythian.'

'Füssli's drawing has no specific meaning or content, shows no specific scene.'

'Füssli frequently quoted from the works of such British authors as Shakespeare, and this work draws its inspiration from Dryden's poem Theodore and Honoria, an adaptation of the "Story of Nastagio degli Onesti" from Boccacio's Decameron.'

'Fuseli first read Shakespeare's plays as a student in Zürich.'

'Although he was the one to translate into English Winckelmann's influential Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, a standard work on the aesthetics of Neoclassicism, his own visionary paintings and drawings make him a representative of the pre-Romantic Sturm und Drang.'

'Fuseli has taken the figure of Hephaestus (Vulcan) from the executioner's pose in Andrea del Sarto's Decapitation of St John.'