Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (front and back)

1770/78

Henry Fuseli (Swiss, active in England, 1741–1825)

Henry Fuseli created the expressive head studies on each side of this unprimed canvas using strategically placed highlights and deep shadows built up of thin washes. The artist probably painted these oil sketches while living in Italy between 1770 and 1778. Both images were engraved as illustrations for Johann Caspar Lavater’s influential book on physiognomy, a popular pseudoscience that assessed an individual’s character based on their outward appearance. According to that text, the heads were inspired by the damned souls in Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s epic Inferno.

Status: On View, Gallery 219
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Henry Fuseli
Title: Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (front and back)
Place: England (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1770–1778
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed verso, lower left: Heinrich Fuessly / 1741-1825
Dimensions: Edges irregular, approx.: 40.6 × 29.8 cm (16 × 11 3/4 in.); Framed: 52.3 × 41.6 cm (20 9/16 × 16 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
Reference Number: 1992.1531
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/116101/manifest.json

David H. Weinglass, “’Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?’ In der Emigration: Johann Heinrich Füssli,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 23–24, 1991, p. 67.
David H. Weinglass, Prints and Engraved Illustrations by and after Henry Fuseli: A Catalogue Raisonné, Aldershot, England, and Brookfield, Vt., 1994, pp. 41, 95, under nos. 50, 83.
Malcolm Warner in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1996, pp. 226-32, ill.
Frances S. Connelly, “Profound Play: The Image Tradition of the Comic Grotesque” in Comic Grotesque, Wit and Mockery in German Art, 1870–1940, exh. cat. Neue Galerie, New York, 2005, p. 205, fig. 11.

Art Institute of Chicago, New Light on Old Masters: French and British Paintings from 1700 to 1800, November 16, 1996–February 2, 1997, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Shockingly Mad: Henry Fuseli and the Art of Drawing, November 18-April 1, 2017.

Sold Puttick and Simpson, London, October 23, 1914, no. 236, to William F. E. Gurley (died 1943), Chicago [part of a group of nineteen works by Fuseli acquired by Gurley as nos. 235 and 236 of this sale, described under the heading of “Original Drawings by H. Fuseli” as “Illustrations to Milton’s Poems.”]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1943 [they were not individually accessioned when they arrived at the Art Institute, but the heads can be identified from Gurley’s index cards preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings]; transferred from the Department of Prints and Drawings to the Department of European Painting, 1990; accessioned, 1992.

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Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (front and back)

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.