Odin in the Underworld
Henry Fuseli (Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825)
1770/72
- Medium
- Brush and gray wash and graphite, with touches of pen and brown ink and red chalk, on cream laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 58.6 × 44.4 cm (23 1/8 × 17 1/2 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
Poet and scholar Thomas Gray’s The Descent of Odin (published 1768), a loose translation of an Old Norse poem, inspired this strange image—an exercise in nearly pure wash devoid of line. Fuseli’s drawing depicts the Norse god Odin descending into the underworld to learn the fate of his beloved son Balder. The arms emerging from the ground belong to the prophetess with whom Odin consults. Above is a vision of the Valkyries mourning at Balder’s tomb. Fuseli’s image of Odin is a clever adaptation of Michelangelo’s God Dividing the Land and the Water, a fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
