The Nightmare

Dark and foreboding things are going on here—but is this scene meant to capture an otherworldly event or depict the young woman’s own nightmare? And what exactly is the difference between those two things? That ambiguity helped make Fuseli’s Nightmare one of the most famous paintings of the era. Many saw the original, but it was engravings, copies, and parodies that secured it a place in popular imagination. This is the officially approved engraving, which made its London publisher a pretty penny.