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Baroque & Romantic · a wall in this concept
The Nightmare
The Nightmare
Henry Fuseli, 1741–1825
An incubus squats on a sleeper's chest; a mare with moonstone eyes pushes through the curtain. When it was first shown in London in 1782 it made Fuseli's name overnight, and it has never really left the culture since — engraved, parodied, borrowed by Freud (a print of it hung in his study) and by every horror film that ever put something heavy on a sleeping body. Detroit bought it in 1955 for less than a used car costs now.