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Henry Fuseli

Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (front and back)

1770/78
Oil on canvas
40.6 × 29.8 cm (16 × 11.7 in)

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Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · verified July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Henry Fuseli created the expressive head studies on each side of this unprimed canvas using strategically placed highlights and deep shadows built up of thin washes. The artist probably painted these oil sketches while living in Italy between 1770 and 1778. Both images were engraved as illustrations for Johann Caspar Lavater’s influential book on physiognomy, a popular pseudoscience that assessed an individual’s character based on their outward appearance. According to that text, the heads were inspired by the damned souls in Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s epic Inferno .

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