The Swiss painter Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) depicted the marvelous, the megalomaniac, supernatural horror, the irrational, the erotic, and the macabre, expressing violently romantic attitudes in a severe neoclassic style.

Henry Fuseli was the first artist to command the epic literature and heroic history of northern Europe as well as the Mediterranean countries, and by his wide reading and close study of the Old Masters he equipped himself to extend the scope of history painting far beyond the traditional limits of the Bible and classical antiquity. In his speculative boldness he was a child of the Enlightenment, but he was also a fierce critic of sterile rationalism and preached the gospel of the imagination with religious fervor.

Henry Fuseli was born Johann Heinrich Füssli (in 1764 he Anglicized his name) in Zurich on Feb. 6, 1741, the son of a painter with strong religious convictions who destined him for the...