# Lady Macbeth [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [FUSELI, John Henry]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 221 x 160 cm ## Commentary Fuseli was the second son of the Zurich portraitist and author Johann Caspar Fussli. His early contact with the teachings of Johann Jakob Bodmer familiarized him with the figures of world literature, which were to remain a major source of inspiration throughout his career. Ordained in 1761 as a pastor in the Zwinglian Reformed Church, he left Zurich two years later for political reasons, traveling by way of Berlin to London, where he settled. Initially Fuseli made his living by writing, while engaged in illustrating the works of his favourite authors, particularly William Shakespeare. The painting represents a scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth. It shows Lady Macbeth as a a sleep-walker in the corridor of a fortress. The terrified eyes of Lady Macbeth, by now lost between reality and nightmare, clutch at the viewer, almost as though trying to capture him and carry him off into her own unknown dimension. ## Related artworks - [Adam and Eve]() - [Brunhilde Observing Gunther, Whom She Has Tied to the Ceiling]() - [Courtesan]() - [Dante and Virgil on the Ice of Kocythos]() - [Ezzelin and Meduna]() - [Gertrude, Hamlet and the Ghost of Hamlet's Father]() - [Lady Macbeth with the Daggers]() - [Leonore Discovering the Dagger Left by Alonzo]() - [Portrait of a Young Woman]() - [Self-Portrait]() - [Silence]() - [Symplegma of a Man with Three Women]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()