Henry Fuseli

Happy Birthday Henry Fuseli!! Born in Switzerland, in 1741, named Johann Heinrich Fussli, later changing his name to sound more Italian. Fuesli was the second of eighteen children, trained at Caroline College in Zurich, intending to go into the ministry. He was forced to leave Switzerland after helping a classmate expose a crooked magistrate. He traveled Europe for a time, settling in Italy, and began to work on his art in earnest. While he completed 200 paintings, his sketches numbered more than 800.Fuesli was interested in the supernatural, exaggerating his figures’ proportions, rarely painting portraits and never painted landscapes. “Damn Nature! she always puts me out!” He normally painted from antiquities or Michelangelo, seldom using models. I have included a mysterious figure entitled Silence. Note the attention to detail in the musculature, fingers and toes, reminiscent of Michelangelo.