1810-Hercules, to deliver Theseus, assails and wounds Pluto on his Throne. (Vide Iliad, Book V. v. 485.) 1811-Macbeth consulting the vision of the armed Head. (Vide Shakspeare's Macbeth.)-Sarpedon slain in battle, carried home by Sleep and Death. (Iliad, Book XVII. v. 682.)-Richard the Third starting from the Apparition of those whom he had assassinated. (Vide Shakspeare.) --Dion seeing a female Spectre overturn his altars and sweep his hall. (Vide Plutarch's Life of Dion.) 1812-Lady Macbeth seizes the daggers (a sketch for a large picture).-The Witch and the Mandrake. (Vide Ben Jonson.)-Eros reviving Psyche. (Apuleius.) Ulysses addressing the Shade of Ajax in Tartarus. 1814-Sigelind, Sifrid's mother, roused by the contest of the good and evil Genius about her infant son. (Vide Liet der Nibelunge XI.) Queen Mab. "She gallops night by night through lovers' brains." (Vide Romeo and Juliet.)-Criemhild mourning over Sifrid. (Vide Liet der Nibelungen XVII.) 1817- Perseus starting from the cave of the Gorgons. (Hesiod's Shield of Hercules.)-The odore in the haunted wood, deterred from rescuing a female chased by an infernal Knight. (Vide Boccaccio's Decameron.) -Criemhild throwing herself on the body of Sivril, assassinated by Trony. (Das Nibelungen Lied.)—Sivril, secretly married to Criemhild, surprised by Trony on his first interview with her after the victory over the Saxons (ditto). 1818 Dante, in his descent to Hell, discovers amidst the flight of hapless lovers whirled about in a hurricane, the forms of Paolo and Franscesca of Rimini. (Vide Inferno, Canto 5.) -A scene of the Deluge. 1820- An Incantation. (See the Pharmaceutria of Theocrites.) --- Criemhild, the Widow of Siegfried the Swift, exposes his body, assisted by Sigmond her father, King of Belgium, in the minster at Worms, and swearing to his assassination, challenges Hagen, Lord of Trony, and Gunther, King of Burgundy, his brother, to approach the corpse, and on the wounds beginning to flow, charges them with the murder. (Lied der Nibelunge, Adventure 17. 4085, &c.)-Ariadne, Theseus, and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. (Vide Virgil, Æn. 6.) 1821- Amphiaraus, a chief of the Argolic league against Thebes, endowed with prescience, to avoid his fate, withdrew to a secret place known only to Eriphyle his wife, which she, seduced by the presents of Polynices, disclosed: thus betrayed, he, on departing, commanded Alcmæon his son, on being informed of his death, to destroy his mother. Eriphyle fell by the hand of her son, who fled, pursued by the Furies. Jealousy (a sketch).-Prometheus delivered by Hercules (a drawing). 1823-The Dawn, "Under the opening eye-lids of the morn: What time the gray-fly winds his sultry horn." Vide Milton's Lycidas. 1824- Amoret delivered by Britomart from the spell of Busyrane. (Vide Fairy Queen.) 1825- Comus. (Vide Milton.)-Pysche. Such were the labours of Fuseli, for exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts; but these are only a small part of the pictures executed by him, during a long and arduous life,―works which will shew to posterity the energies of his mind, the richness of his invention, and the profundity of his knowledge. |