Henry Fuseli

The Three Witches (1783)

Henry Fuseli (1741 – 1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, who worked and spent most of his life in Britain. As a painter, Fuseli favoured the supernatural. He pitched everything on an ideal scale, believing a certain amount of exaggeration necessary in the higher branches of historical painting. His figures are full of life and earnestness, and seem to have an object in view which they follow with intensity. Like Rubens he excelled in the art of setting his figures in motion. Though the lofty and terrible was his proper sphere, Fuseli had a fine perception of the ludicrous. The grotesque humour of his fairy scenes, especially those taken from A Midsummer-Night's Dream, is in its way not less remarkable than the poetic power of his more ambitious works. I have already posted about his faqmous paintings entitled "Nightmare" HERE and HERE. In this post we will know some dark and supernatural Fuseli's works too.

Macbeth, Banquo and the witches on the heath

Satan and Death with Sin intervening

Satan and Death with Sin intervening

The Fairy Queen Titania and the donkey head Zettel, detail: Elfe (1793-94)

The fairy queen Titania caressing the donkey-headed Zettel (A Midsummer-Night's Dream) (1780-90)

Macbeth consulting the Vision of the Armed Head

The dream of the shepherd (1793)

Scene of Witches, from "The Masque of Queens" by Ben Jonson (1785)

Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers, 1810-12

Theodore Meets in the Wood the Spectre of His Ancestor Guido Cavalcanti (1783)

The Sin, followed by Death (1794-96)

Thor, in the boat of Hymir, battering the Midgard Serpent (1790)

The Night-Hag visiting Lapland Witches

Sleep paralysis in art as demonic visitation

Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard, Nightmare (1800)

Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon in which people who are either falling asleep or awakening from sleep temporarily experience a sense of inability to move. More formally, it is a transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia (muscle weakness).

Henry Fuseli, the Nightmare (1781)

Henry Fuseli, the Nightmare (1790–91)

Henry Fuseli, The Incubus Leaving Two Sleeping Women (1793)

Hallucinations are symptoms commonly experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis. There are some main types of these hallucinations that can be linked to pathologic neurophysiology. These include the belief that there is an intruder in the room, the incubus, and vestibular motor sensations. Many people that experience sleep paralysis are struck with a deep sense of terror because they sense a menacing presence in the room while they are paralyzed which will hereafter be referred to as the intruder.

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809 – 1864)

unknown artist and date

Sensing a malignant presence in the room during an episode of sleep paralysis is believed to be the result of a hyper vigilant state that is created in the midbrain. More specifically it is believed that the emergency response is activated in the brain when individuals wake up paralyzed and feel extremely vulnerable to attack. This feeling of helplessness can intensify the effects of the threat response well above the level typically found in normal dreams; this could explain why the hallucinations experienced during sleep paralysis are so vivid.

Jean Pierre Simon, The Nightmare (1810)

Normally the threat activated vigilance system is a protective mechanism used by the body to differentiate between dangerous situations and to determine whether the fear response is appropriate. This threat vigilance system is evolutionarily biased to interpret ambiguous stimuli as dangerous because the survival of the organism is greatly increased if it is more likely to interpret situations as life-threatening. This could serve as an explanation as to why the presence sensed by those experiencing sleep paralysis is generally believed to be evil.

Eugène Thivier, The Nightmare (1894)

The incubus hallucination is associated with the belief by the individual experiencing sleep paralysis that an intruder is attempting to suffocate them, usually by means of strangulation. It is believed that the incubus hallucination is a combination of the threat vigilance activation system and the muscle paralysis associated with sleep paralysis that removes voluntary control of breathing.

Fritz Schwimbeck , The Nightmare (1915)

Vincenz Georg Kininger - The Dream of Eleanor (1795)

The original definition of sleep paralysis was codified by Samuel Johnson as "nightmare", a term that evolved into our modern definition. Sleep paralysis was widely considered to be the work of demons and more specifically incubi, which were thought to sit on the chests of sleepers. In Old English the name for these beings was mare or mære, hence comes the mare part in nightmare.

Ferdinand Hodler (1853 - 1918)

In Finnish and Swedish folklore, sleep paralysis is caused by a mare, a supernatural creature related to incubi and succubi. The mare is a damned woman, who is cursed and her body is carried mysteriously during sleep and without her noticing. In this state, she visits villagers to sit on their rib cages while they are asleep, causing them to experience nightmares.

wood engraving from J Cazotte's 1845 book, Le Diable Amoureux, entitled "The Nightmare"

Folk belief in Newfoundland, South Carolina and Georgia describe the negative figure of the hag who leaves her physical body at night, and sits on the chest of her victim. The victim usually wakes with a feeling of terror, has difficulty breathing because of a perceived heavy invisible weight on his or her chest, and is unable to move i.e., experiences sleep paralysis.

Olaf Gulbransson (1873 – 1958) 

Warren Criswell , Incubus

In Turkey, sleep paralysis is called karabasan, and is similar to other stories of demonic visitation during sleep. A demon, comes to the victim's room, holds him or her down hard enough not to allow any kind of movement, and starts to strangle the person. To get rid of the demonic creature, one needs to pray to Allah with certain lines from the Qur'an.

Dennis Culver

Andy Paciorek

Andy Paciorek

"The Nightmare" (1781) by Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) was a Swiss painter, poet, critic, and teacher, a fervent admirer of Shakespeare, who spent most of his active career in England. Fuseli has often been regarded as a forerunner of the Romantic art movement and a precursor of Symbolism and Surrealism. His most famous painting is The Nightmare (1781), in which an ape-like goblin sits on a young woman, who is sleeping in a strained posture.

After his romance in Zurich with Lavater's (his best friend) niece Anna Landolt failed, he left in 1779 for London. It is though that his best-known scene, The Nightmare, refers to this affair. A young woman is mounted by a demonic looking incubus; the monster literally is a burden on her heart. She lies in a sprawl, with her arm hanging down. A horse, the "night mare" gazes through the curtains with phosphorescent eyes, observing or leering. It has remained a puzzle, whose nightmare Fuseli portrays - it cannot be the woman's because she is part of the scene herself. It has been said, that the picture is an revenge for an unfulfilled desire, ultimately perhaps a manifestation of a jealous passion, in which the strange lover of the woman is reduced into a monster. The work became so popular that Fuseli painted several other versions on request. (extract from the article by Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen)
Το διασημότερο έργο του Φουσέλι, "ο Εφιάλτης" λέγεται ότι είναι εμπνευσμένο από το αποτυχημένο ρομάντσο του με την Anna Landolt, τη νύφη του καλύτερου φίλου του. Πιστεύεται ότι εκφράζει τη ζήλια και το αίσθημα ταπείνωσης από αυτή του την αποτυχία, παρουσιάζοντας τον εαυτό του σαν ένα κακόμορφο σκοτεινό δαίμονα incubus που γίνεται βάρος στο όμορφο σώμα της κοιμωμένης. Το έργο αυτό έγινε τόσο διάσημο που ο Φουσέλι έκανε και άλλες εκδοχές του επειδή του ζητήθηκαν. Η δεύτερη φωτό είναι μια από αυτές.

Ο πίνακας αυτός χρησιμοποιείται και ως αναπαράσταση του φαινομένου της υπνικής παράλυσης που στη λαϊκή φαντασία είναι ένας δαίμονας με το όνομα Μόρα, Βραχνάς ή Incubus/Succubus που μας κρατάει σε ακινησία ενώ είμαστε σε κατάσταση μεταξύ ύπνου και ξύπνου.