Prince Arthur's Vision (Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, ix, 13)
Engraver Peltro William Tomkins British
After Henry Fuseli Swiss
Publisher Thomas Macklin British
Not on view
Attracted to subjects that touch on the unconscious, Fuseli wrote, "One of the most unexplored regions of art are [sic] dreams" (Aphorism no. 231), and here represents Prince Arthur, from Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queen." The sleeping prince is visited by a vision of Gloriana, a poetic evocation of Elizabeth I, whom the artist imagines dressed in fashionable late-18th century garb and attended by spirits. The engraver Tomkins based the print on a painting Fuseli made for Macklin's Poets Gallery around 1788, now at the Kunstmuseum, Basel.
