.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
This powerful and haunting portrait, traditionally entitled 'Silence’ or 'Il Silenzio’, has been identified by Schiff as depicting Martha Hess. Martha and her sister Magdalena were the sisters of one of Fuseli’s boyhood friends, Felix Hess. When Fuseli was fifteen his family returned to Zürich and he attended the Caroline College where he studied literature, aesthetics, Greek, and Latin under Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger. His friendships with Johann Caspar Lavater and Felix Hess date from this period of his studies.
On his return to Switzerland from Rome in October 1778, his only return to his homeland after his self imposed exile in 1762, Fuseli was involved in a number of artistic projects, but also seems to have been involved in a number of intense love affairs and near-affairs, notably with Martha Hess' married sister Magdalena Schweizer-Hess, despite professing to be deeply in love with the 21-year-old niece of J.C. Lavater, Anna Landolt (Lavater) at this time. He executed a drawing of himself reading to Martha and her sister Magdalena (Zurich, Kunsthaus, see Schiff, op.cit., no. 580).
Magdalena was wife of the affluent philanthropist, project planner and philosophical dreamer Johann Caspar Schweizer. Both sisters seem to have been of an unusually emotional nature: Magdalena claimed to be able to divine earthquakes and underground springs, and could be induced into a hypnotic trance while having her hair brushed, while Martha was prone to falling into a state of religious ecstasy. Schiff describes Magdalena as being 'a coquette, and of an irritable nervous constitution; Martha however appeared more ethereal and with a tendency toward religious ecstasy (see Schiff, Henry Fuseli, 1741-1825, exhib. cat. Tate Gallery, 1975, p. 52, under no. 4). However the drawing of Martha in the Morgan Library, New York, dated 1778-1779, has a delicate sensuality which suggests a degree of intimacy between artist and sitter. Certainly, the effect that the excitable Füssli had on the sisters, and they on him, seems to have been profound.
Despite Martha dying from consumption in December 1779 Fuseli continued to depict her. Schiff dates the present drawing to 1780-1790. It is related to the somewhat freer, full-face, full-length drawing in the British Museum (Schiff, op.cit., no. 850), dated to 1780-1785.
Fuseli used drawings of both Martha and her sister Magdalena to illustrate Lavater’s Essai sur la Physiognomie, 1781 and onwards (for drawings of Martha in profile see Schiff, op.cit, nos. 575 and 848). A further study of Martha, seen in half-profile, from below, was sold in these Rooms, 14 April 1992, lot 11. Perhaps the combination of her ethereal character and her untimely death meant that it was her features alone which could encapsulate the mood of this allegorical drawing.
On his return to Switzerland from Rome in October 1778, his only return to his homeland after his self imposed exile in 1762, Fuseli was involved in a number of artistic projects, but also seems to have been involved in a number of intense love affairs and near-affairs, notably with Martha Hess' married sister Magdalena Schweizer-Hess, despite professing to be deeply in love with the 21-year-old niece of J.C. Lavater, Anna Landolt (Lavater) at this time. He executed a drawing of himself reading to Martha and her sister Magdalena (Zurich, Kunsthaus, see Schiff, op.cit., no. 580).
Magdalena was wife of the affluent philanthropist, project planner and philosophical dreamer Johann Caspar Schweizer. Both sisters seem to have been of an unusually emotional nature: Magdalena claimed to be able to divine earthquakes and underground springs, and could be induced into a hypnotic trance while having her hair brushed, while Martha was prone to falling into a state of religious ecstasy. Schiff describes Magdalena as being 'a coquette, and of an irritable nervous constitution; Martha however appeared more ethereal and with a tendency toward religious ecstasy (see Schiff, Henry Fuseli, 1741-1825, exhib. cat. Tate Gallery, 1975, p. 52, under no. 4). However the drawing of Martha in the Morgan Library, New York, dated 1778-1779, has a delicate sensuality which suggests a degree of intimacy between artist and sitter. Certainly, the effect that the excitable Füssli had on the sisters, and they on him, seems to have been profound.
Despite Martha dying from consumption in December 1779 Fuseli continued to depict her. Schiff dates the present drawing to 1780-1790. It is related to the somewhat freer, full-face, full-length drawing in the British Museum (Schiff, op.cit., no. 850), dated to 1780-1785.
Fuseli used drawings of both Martha and her sister Magdalena to illustrate Lavater’s Essai sur la Physiognomie, 1781 and onwards (for drawings of Martha in profile see Schiff, op.cit, nos. 575 and 848). A further study of Martha, seen in half-profile, from below, was sold in these Rooms, 14 April 1992, lot 11. Perhaps the combination of her ethereal character and her untimely death meant that it was her features alone which could encapsulate the mood of this allegorical drawing.