HENRY FUSEL I (Johann Heinrich Fiissli)
137 An Old Man Murdered by
Three Younger Men
Pen and black ink and gray wash; H: 42.2 cm (i6^5 /s in.)
W:47.6cm(i8^3 4in.)
84.00.711
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: None.
PROVENANCE: Art market, London.
EXHIBITIONS: An Exhibition of Old Master Drawings
P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., London, June-July 1984,
no. 44.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: None.
;,THE SUBJECT OF THIS DRAWING HAS DEFIED IDENTI-
fication, resulting in part from Fuseli's original approach
to the depiction of literary themes. It has been dated by
G. Schiff to circa 1768-1772 (Colnaghi 1984, no. 44), but
the stylistic character of the scene argues for a somewhat
later date, certainly after the artist's arrival in Italy in 1770.
Its theatricality and its rather linear, abstract rendering of
monumental figures are reminiscent of Fuseli's Shake-
spearian drawings of the early 1770s.^1 The manner in
which the curtain is drawn over the upper right corner
occurs several times among the Shakespearian depictions
and heightens the stage-like effect. The rendering of the
figures is explicitly classicizing and may, as P. J. Holliday
has suggested,^2 reflect Fuseli's admiration for the Niobid
Group in the UfEzi, Florence. The two male figures with
daggers in the foreground seem based upon the statue of
one of the Niobids, whereas the woman holding a torch
is more generally related to the representation of Niobe
herself, especially in her facial expression.^3 Characteris-
tically for Fuseli, the figures have been transformed into
an idiom much more overtly dramatic and morpholog-
ically abstract than their sources and are shown in an ex-
plosively lit interior.1. G. Schiff, Johann Heinrich Fiissli (Zurich, 1973), nos. 446,
456, 458, 464.
2. Conversation with the author, 1986.>- M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (New York,
1955), figs. 253, 258.
306 SWISS SCHOOL • FUSELI