Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers

Fuseli showed this in 1812, the year London said goodbye to its greatest Lady Macbeth. Sarah Siddons had terrified audiences in the part for nearly 30 years, and that June she chose it for her farewell to the stage. Fuseli knew the play as few painters did. He had translated Macbeth into German and loved Shakespeare above all writers. He seizes the instant just after the murder, Macbeth frozen with the bloody daggers while his wife lunges to take them from him. There is almost no detail, the figures lit like apparitions rising out of the dark, because Fuseli believed that too much fine detail destroys terror.