La Pesadilla, Henry Fuseli

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This hub, you notice, is not the whole woman, just a part. The woman's body is itself delivered in shots. The bust is one incident. The left forearm and the flaccid hand, trailing its fingers on the floor, are another. (There's a clear jump of attention as you look between them: this - that.) And the rest of her, the tapering mermaid's tail curve, ending in a single toe-point, is a third shot, another jump. This fragmenting of the passive figure is not only fetishism. It's editing. You the viewer have to put this distrait body together from its parts. It makes it all the more passive, less in control of itself.

And then, the monster! - the devilish hunched incubus, that squats on the woman's belly. The jump juxtaposition is obvious here: compact brown lump set upon stretched-out, languid white curve. There's an extra scari-ness in the way this figure lurks. Its lower half is shadowy and formless, blending into the gloom behind, not really anything. Its hideous shape and nature only come to light, materialise, as you go up, with a gradual realisation.

What adds to the fear, when you see what the creature is, is that it isn't actually doing anything to her. It's just sitting on her, inert, like a monkey-ornament. It's not performing a horrible act. It has some calm and horrible purpose, which is worse. And it turns its bulging eyes to meet the viewer's in a way that shows a mind at work, and may invite complicity.

But as this horror is sinking in, the scene's big shock effect strikes: on the far left the crazy nightmare horse, flash-lit, eyes burning, hair standing on end, barges into the picture out of the darkness, out of nowhere, out of control. It enters suddenly, and Fuseli depicts it like something that is seen suddenly, its form not fully grasped. He paints a Francis Bacon creature, in elusive, flickering highlights and blurs that don't integrate into a single solid. It is hysteria and suddenness embodied. Without its white-hot eyeballs, the horse would hardly read as "head" at all.

The scene carefully paces its horrors. It is made of shots and jumps, gradual realisations, sudden shocks. It is thoroughly and dramatically timed. True, the editing of a picture is always more flexible than the frame-sequence of a cartoon strip or the cuts of a film. You can always go back, you can move between things in other sequences, every part can be related to every other.

The title of this piece of work is a homograph and contains 1) the literal meaning, and 2) the figurative meaning. The first definition implies the actual act of having a nightmare: to have a terrifying dream in which the dreamer experiences fear and anxiety. The second term connects the horse in the painting as a 'mare'. The suffix 'mare' is derived from the word 'maren' which means to crush. Therefore the night-mare in its original sense means night crusher, which does not imply bad dreams, but instead, sleep paralysis with drowsiness or hypnopompic (semi-conscious state before wakening) hallucinations. Therefore we have vivid images which are fantastic and utterly imposible.

The theme is of erotic play, which is displayed by the woman's position, deranged by monstrous sexual violation. It was also meant to bring confusion to the viewer, over the content of the painting being applied to the title. Many explanations have been brought up to explain this painting including one that is based on Fuseli's love life. After Fuselie came back to England from Rome he was rejected by a friends niece who chose another man over him. This picture then may represent the vengeance the artist wants against the niece with the demon taking his place over the girl.

MUJER

In the painting we see a woman, lying on her back on a bed. See how Fuseli has contrasted the very bright colour of the woman herself and her nightdress with the dark red, yellows and ochres of the background. Her position has been described as “lying in a sexually receptive position”. She looks almost comatose with her right hand placed behind the back of her head which is hanging down exposing her long pale neck. Her left arm also dangles over the side of the bed.

It has been suggested that the sleeping woman in this painting is Anna Landolt and Fuseli himself is the incubus. Strangely enough, on the rear of the painting is an unfinished sketch of a girl which is thought to be Anna and that in some way supports the conclusion that Anna is the woman in Fuseli’s picture.

The woman on the bed is based on an ancient sculpture but is still in the form of a modern woman of the eighteenth century. Other figures like this woman, which are models of antiquate forms of art that have been modernized, can be found in other illustrations of the era; they are called, 'fancy pictures'. She is meant to contrast the small dark room with her light feature/clothes and sprawled body. She is obviously the main focus of the painting and thus our interpretations should originate with her, or what she is trying to portray. Whether she is in the middle of a nightmare or writhing in pleasure, is up to the viewer to decide. What is important is the fact that her body is, in what appears to be, a natural position. This idea of casual/natural nature is one of the staples of the Romantic era and should be taken into account.

n the painting, a woman in a flowing white garment lies prone across her bed, leading us to wonder if she has fainted from fright or rapture. Her body is weighed down by a crouching ominous being that stares at the viewer

CABALLO

In the left background we see a horse’s head with leering phosphorescent eyes push its way through the parting of the dark red velvet curtains. In some quarters this depiction is considered to be the sexual act itself.

The second interpretation of the picture is that the dark horse is a the real cause of horror for the woman. This black horse is seen pushing its head through the curtain, and it is possible that this horse was the imp's means of traveling through the night. The fluster between 'mare' and 'mara' is the cause of the horse to be identified as the actual nightmare. However, Fuseli most likely intended this confusion as a desired result from viewing the painting. The horse is based on a ghostly figure in Salvator Rosa's "Saul and the Witch of Endor" combined with "The Horse Tamers" from Piazza Quirinale, Rome.

DEMONIO

Sitting atop of her abdomen with its feet positioned over her heart is an incubus.