拍品专文
This drawing is from one of the pages in the album annotated by Miss Moore 'Mrs Wainwright's'.
From the inscription on the drawing itself it seems that Fuseli executed it at William Roscoe's new house at Allerton, when visiting Liverpool with Joseph Johnson in September 1799.
This drawing is a preliminary sketch for the pen and wash drawing in the Auckland City Art Gallery, dated by Schiff to c. 1800-10 (S. 1791). The Auckland drawing is in reverse and measures 18 x 11¾in. (460 x 300mm.), and the figure of Io is larger in scale. Fuseli did a drawing of Prometheus alone in his early Roman years, S. 629.
Prometheus was one of the Titans and, in early Greek legend, first created man out of clay. On Zeus witholding fire from mankind, Prometheus stole it from the Chariot of the Sun, and was punished by being bound to a rock on Mount Caucasus where an eagle picked continuously at his liver. This particular incident comes from Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, 895-900: in her wanderings Io comes across the bound Prometheus and alerts Hercules, who, many years (thirty, one thousand, or thirty thousand!) having passed, persuades Zeus to release him. The story of Prometheus was much used as an exemplar early in the 19th century, by among others Byron, Shelley in his Prometheus Unbound, and for Beethoven's ballet The Creatures of Prometheus
From the inscription on the drawing itself it seems that Fuseli executed it at William Roscoe's new house at Allerton, when visiting Liverpool with Joseph Johnson in September 1799.
This drawing is a preliminary sketch for the pen and wash drawing in the Auckland City Art Gallery, dated by Schiff to c. 1800-10 (S. 1791). The Auckland drawing is in reverse and measures 18 x 11¾in. (460 x 300mm.), and the figure of Io is larger in scale. Fuseli did a drawing of Prometheus alone in his early Roman years, S. 629.
Prometheus was one of the Titans and, in early Greek legend, first created man out of clay. On Zeus witholding fire from mankind, Prometheus stole it from the Chariot of the Sun, and was punished by being bound to a rock on Mount Caucasus where an eagle picked continuously at his liver. This particular incident comes from Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, 895-900: in her wanderings Io comes across the bound Prometheus and alerts Hercules, who, many years (thirty, one thousand, or thirty thousand!) having passed, persuades Zeus to release him. The story of Prometheus was much used as an exemplar early in the 19th century, by among others Byron, Shelley in his Prometheus Unbound, and for Beethoven's ballet The Creatures of Prometheus