The Spirit of Knowledge
Henry Fuseli (Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825)
1798
- Medium
- Black chalk and brush and gray wash on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 18.2 × 22.3 cm (7 3/16 × 8 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Given in honor of Dorothy Braude Edinburg by Lowell Libson and the Directors of Spink-Leger
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
One of the most original and probing artists of the late 18th century, Fuseli worked principally in London but went to Rome for eight years beginning in 1770. The influence of Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls is tangible in this allegorical figure, probably drawn in London a decade after he left Rome; at this time Fuseli had recently met William Blake, who treated a similar subject in his Book of Job.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
