Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (recto and verso)

Description

Henry Fuseli created the expressive head studies on each side of this unprimed canvas using strategically placed highlights and deep shadows built up of thin washes. The artist probably painted these oil sketches while living in Italy between 1770 and 1778. Both images were engraved as illustrations for Johann Caspar Lavater’s influential book on physiognomy, a popular pseudoscience that assessed an individual’s character based on their outward appearance. According to that text, the heads were inspired by the damned souls in Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s epic Inferno.

Provenance

Sold Puttick and Simpson, London, October 23, 1914, no. 236, to William F. E. Gurley (died 1943), Chicago [part of a group of nineteen works by Fuseli acquired by Gurley as nos. 235 and 236 of this sale, described under the heading of “Original Drawings by H. Fuseli” as “Illustrations to Milton’s Poems.”]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1943 [they were not individually accessioned when they arrived at the Art Institute, but the heads can be identified from Gurley’s index cards preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings]; transferred from the Department of Prints and Drawings to the Department of European Painting, 1990; accessioned, 1992.

Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (recto and verso)

Henry Fuseli

1770–78

Accession Number

116101

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

Edges irregular, approx.: 40.6 × 29.8 cm (16 × 11 3/4 in.); Framed: 52.3 × 41.6 cm (20 9/16 × 16 3/8 in.)

Classification

oil on canvas

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection