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Henry Fuseli y el imaginario sobrenatural

Translation: Jon Alkorta Martiartu, PhD (EHU/UPV)

Henry Fuseli and the supernatural imaginary

Witches, literature and mythology

Henry Fuseli, Titania dn Bottom. Tate Gallery, London. 

Henry Fuseli is a very important figure in the shaping of Romantic art: he is a precursor, an enlightened man; but perhaps his production has been somewhat overshadowed by the genius of William Blake (a contemporary of his, although somewhat younger), who was an admirer of his work. Here we are going to offer only a few brushstrokes on the work of this painter and emphasize his most singular works, which are at the same time the most mysterious.

Born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zurich in 1741, he cultivated drawing and painting, as well as art history and literature. It was in his native Zurich that his fascination for the British world emerged. At school, under the teachings of Jacob Bodmer, he discovered two giants, Shakespeare and Milton, who were a decisive influence on the work of this author. In fact, the young Heinrich soon moved to London, where he would become known by his name adapted to English: Henry Fuseli. It is worth mentioning that after a few years in England, as it could not be otherwise with the great painters of the time, he went to Rome to learn by observing the great masters of the Renaissance, mainly Michelangelo. He then returned again to England, where he settled definitively and developed his mature work.

Shakespeare

When he first arrived in London, Fuseli began to work on drawings of Shakespeare’s works for the Shakespeare Gallery, where canvases by different authors illustrating passages from the works of the English playwright were exhibited. He found the themes very suggestive and always sought the supernatural element in them. Later on, he took some of these works to canvas. We will focus on two of them, those related to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet.

Titania and Bottom (1790) is a work brimming with fantasy and is based on Act IV of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oberon is angry with Queen Titania and casts a spell on her: she will fall in love with Bottom, whose head has become that of an ass due to the rogue Puck’s spell. Bottom occupies the central position of the scene, since he is the one who suffers the worst fate and on him falls the supernatural element (the monstrous transformation). Next to him is Titania, in love, with her whole cohort of fairies around her. Next to her Fuseli freely places various characters, such as the young woman on the right, who carries a dwarf on a leash and could symbolize the triumph of youth over old age. The author made another version of the subject of smaller size and with fewer characters where the protagonism of Bottom reflects even more this supernatural element. Fuseli seems to be fascinated by his transformation. Perhaps the hybrid of man with a donkey’s head made him think of the god Set from Egyptian mythology.

Norse mythology: Thor

Henry Fuseli, Thor Striking the Midgard Serpent. Royal Academy of Arts, London. 

Regarding Hamlet, perhaps because he was attracted to the history of Denmark, Fuseli came across the book Introduction to the History of Denmark by Paul Henri (1755), translated into English by Thomas Percy. This book included a translation of the Edda in prose, one of the fundamental texts to learn about Norse mythology. From this reading Fuseli extracted the theme for one of his most monumental canvases: Thor Striking the Midgard Serpent, 1790. Once again, the supernatural element is present: the figure of a god in battle against a mythical being (the great and evil Midgard serpent, which could only be defeated by the most powerful god).

The painting depicts the struggle between Thor and this sacred serpent. This story, as mentioned above, is part of Snorri Sturluson’s 13th century prose Edda. Chapter XLVIII of this work tells how Thor, son of Odin and member of the lineage of the Aesir, one of the most powerful gods, has to fight the Midgard serpent. For this he commands a small boat together with the giant Hymir. Thor cuts off the head of an ox and uses it as a bait to lure the magical and powerful serpent. Midgard falls into the trap and at that moment Thor and the serpent look into each other’s eyes. At that instant Hymir cuts the hook and releases the serpent, which returns to the water; but Thor has time to swing his hammer Mjolnir and strike Midgard’s head, thus killing it.

If we look carefully at the canvas, we can discover the elements of the story: below, forming a spiral, we see the great Midgard serpent caught on the hook. Behind, on the boat, are Thor and Hymir. Thor has the line in one hand and with the other raises his mighty hammer to the sky to kill the serpent. The giant is terrified and decides to free the reptile, but it is too late: Thor will kill it with his blow.

The composition is spectacular, with the all-powerful Thor naked on a contraposto, as if he were a Greek statue. Here Fuseli anticipated the painting of the male nude that would proliferate in 19th century art. The serpent is also impressive: so large and strong, yet writhing in pain under Thor’s strength.

The scene is set in a dark landscape (at night, in the shadows), probably influenced by the environments described in the Gothic literature that was emerging just at that time, in the late 18th century, when Fuseli achieved recognition as a painter.

Witches

Anonymous, The Witch and the Mandrake. Drawing copy of Fuselis’ canvas. Creative Commons license. 

A theme that the author cultivated several times throughout his work is that of witches. Again it is a supernatural theme, as Fuseli was attracted by the knowledge that witches possess about nature and supernatural powers. This theme appears in several of his works, as is the case of The Changeling of 1780, where a witch carries out th horrible deed of taking a baby from its cradle; or the drawing entitled The Witch and the Mandrake of 1812, which illustrates a passage from the book Masque of Queene by Ben Jonson. In the latter, Fuseli tried to signify this admiration for the supernatural. With this drawing he contributed to forge the archetype of the sorceress as an old woman, hidden behind a bonnet, who knows the beings of the afterlife. On this occasion, the mandrake that the witch observes is endowed with life; it is a small anthropomorphic character attached to the plant itself. This is the belief in the anima mundi: all beings of the different kingdoms (mineral, vegetable and animal) are endowed with a soul.

Another notable example of witch-painting is the canvas Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches (1796), inspired by a passage from Milton’s Paradise Lost. In this painting the night witch appears as a spectral being: she is a demonic entity that arrives from the heights mounted on a horse, and her illuminated figure approaches the place of the action. Below her appear nine infernal dogs, related to sin in Paradise Lost, that accompany her. In the foreground we see one of the witches of Lapland covered with a cloak (as the witches mentioned above were represented). She has captured a baby that is going to be killed, as the knife that we see emerging in the lower part of the canvas reveals. On the right are the other witches of Lapland contemplating the scene. We are, then, before a terrifying painting that represents a human sacrifice: the shedding of innocent blood to serve evil. A truly terrifying canvas.

Paradise Lost

We mentioned at the beginning how Fuseli had participated in the Shakespeare Gallery. Later on, he also took part in the Milton Gallery, where he paid tribute to this writer’s masterpiece, Paradise Lost (1667). Fuseli presented several canvases there, among them the aforementioned Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches, which illustrated a passage from Book II of this work. But what we want to emphasize on this occasion is another mysterious character: Milton’s Lucifer. The figure of the fallen angel sketched in Paradise Lostdiverges from the traditional devil. As we know, from the Middle Ages until the 19th century the representation of the devil in art was that of a monstrous being, like a dragon, sometimes with a second head in the belly or even three terrifying faces.

Here lies novelty: Fuseli represents the evil one in a different way in light of Paradise Lost. Milton presents Lucifer (whose name means ‘light-bearer’) as an attractive and rebellious character, never evil, but transgressive. Fuseli echoes this interpretation, as we see in some canvases for the Milton Gallery where Lucifer is depicted as a beautiful angel.

William Blake, Satan. Copy of Fuselis’ drawing. Creative Commons license. 

This iconography of Lucifer as a beautiful angel breaks with the traditional representation and starts a tradition continued by William Blake, a follower of Fuseli (remember that this painter will reinterpret Paradise Lost, both in his poetic and pictorial work). This tradition will be consolidated throughout the 19th century (Bellver’s Fallen Angel in Madrid’s Retiro Park and Geefs’ The Genius of Evil in St. Paul’s Cathedral in Liege, for example), and will culminate at the end of the century with authors such as Rodin, whose The Thinker is seated at the gates of Hell, or other symbolists (for example, Franz von Stuck) who represent the devil as a man and not as a monster.

As we have seen, Fuseli reveals through his work a remarkable interest in the mysterious. In fact, he is a pioneer in the painting of the supernatural, because since the Nordic primitives such as Hieronymus Bosch represented their infernal vision in unparalleled works, the European art of the eighteenth century had fallen into the overloaded baroque or everyday costumbrismo. In this sense, Fuseli is a proto-Romantic who breaks with his contemporaries and cultivates in painting the new ideas of the subjective individual. He is also the first to question from painting the figure of the devil as an evil being. In view of his very rich works related to the mysterious, we can affirm that Fuseli constituted a turning point in European art.


OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
Dr. Pedro Ortega (4 de marzo de 2024). Henry Fuseli y el imaginario sobrenatural. El blog de Tartalo. Recuperado 14 de abril de 2026 de https://doi.org/10.58079/vy3r


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