Henry Fuseli’s Julia Appearing to Pompey in a Dream: hell hath no Fury – The Guardian

This early work by the 18th centurys master of the diabolical arts depicts a passage from the Roman classical poet Lucans Bellum Civile. Pompey, about to commit himself to civil war, dreams of his late wife, his enemy Caesars daughter Julia. Though famed for kindness, youth and good looks, Lucan imagines her returning as a Fury.

It predates the Fuseli of the 1780s, when works such as The Nightmare, with its demon crouched on the chest of a sleeping beauty, established him as the go-to man for all things satanic and saucy: a dark relief from rationalism.

Created in the 1770s when the Swiss artist, spurred on by Joshua Reynolds, learned his craft in Rome. It shows Fuseli shaking up the kind of subject matter the eras neo-classicists loved with timeless sex and violence.

While the figure-hugging drapery recalls classical and Renaissance statues, with her hook nose and claw-like hands murderously poised, this witchy Julia seems to owe as much to folklore as she does the classics.

Part of Elizabeth Price Curates, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, to 1 May

Excerpt from:

Henry Fuseli's Julia Appearing to Pompey in a Dream: hell hath no Fury - The Guardian