Demon lover
This early work by the 18th century’s master of the diabolical arts depicts a passage from the Roman classical poet Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Pompey, about to commit himself to civil war, dreams of his late wife, his enemy Caesar’s daughter Julia. Though famed for kindness, youth and good looks, Lucan imagines her returning as a Fury.
His dark materials
It predates the Fuseli of the 1780s, when works such as The Nightmare, with its demon crouched on the chest of a sleeping beauty, established him as the go-to man for all things satanic and saucy: a dark relief from rationalism.
Fatal attraction
Created in the 1770s when the Swiss artist, spurred on by Joshua Reynolds, learned his craft in Rome. It shows Fuseli shaking up the kind of subject matter the era’s neo-classicists loved with timeless sex and violence.
Season of the witch
While the figure-hugging drapery recalls classical and Renaissance statues, with her hook nose and claw-like hands murderously poised, this witchy Julia seems to owe as much to folklore as she does the classics.
Part of Elizabeth Price Curates, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, to 1 May
