Romeo and Juliet: the Tomb Scene

By 1790 Joseph Wright of Derby was famous for one thing above all: painting darkness pierced by a single source of light. Here he turns that skill on Shakespeare. It is the crypt of the Capulets, and Juliet has woken beside the poisoned body of Romeo. She kneels over him, and at the instant Wright catches she has just heard a footstep on the stair and snatched up a dagger to end her own life. One lamp lights her face and Romeo's, and everything beyond them drops into black stone. Wright meant the picture for a grand London gallery of Shakespeare scenes, fell out with the publisher over it, and kept the canvas himself. It stayed unsold in his lifetime.