Study for Inquisition, Illustration to Columbiad
Henry Fuseli (Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825)
c. 1806
- Medium
- Oil paint, over touches of graphite, on cream wove paper, laid down on stipple etching, etching, and aquatint in black on cream wove paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 52.9 × 44.6 cm (20 7/8 × 17 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
- 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
The Spanish Inquisition (symbolizing religious intolerance) is personified as a sinister-looking woman carrying a sword and holding a flaming vessel. She stands triumphantly atop the prone body of Truth. Peering out from behind her is a Dominican friar, an instrument of her authority. Fuseli’s painted sketch (a study for an unpublished engraving) illustrates lines from the early American poet Joel Barlow’s Columbiad (published 1807), an epic account in verse of the founding of the United States. Barlow had commissioned illustrations from Fuseli, which were ultimately rejected. Notably, Fuseli painted this study directly on an etching of one of his own paintings, which was presumably close at hand.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
