The Discovery (recto), Two Sketches of Standing Male Figures (verso)
Henry Fuseli
1767–1769
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, over graphite with traces of opaque brown paint (recto), graphite (verso), on cream laid paper, tipped onto ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- 52.9 × 65.8 cm (20 7/8 × 25 15/16 in.)
- Genre
- pen and ink drawings
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
drawings (visual works)paintgraphiteinkpen and ink drawingswashlaid paperbrown washprints and drawingpaperstumpingdrawing techniquespaper (fiber product)
About
This powerful drawing—a bravura exercise in virtuoso line and tonal washes—illustrates a story from Swiss theologian Ludwig Lavater’s book De Spectris (“On Ghosts”), published in 1569. It describes a priest who, dressed in a sheet, haunts his wealthy niece who is living in his house, in an attempt to rape her and cheat her of her fortune. Terrified, the niece enlists the aid of a friend who exposes the repentant priest.The curious badminton match visible in the background—not in the story, but added by Fuseli as a critical commentary—is a reference to a proverb composed in Latin by the Dutch poet Jacob Cats (1577–1660): Amor ut pila vices exiget, “Love, like a ball, demands reciprocation.”
