Milton Dictating to His Daughter

The blind poet John Milton dictates his epic Paradise Lost from the depths of a shadowed interior, his daughter transcribing his words while a second woman listens as she sews, the scene lit by the cool chromatic contrast that was Henry Fuseli’s signature — a pale, ghostly Milton against the rosy-cheeked women. Fuseli painted the canvas in 1794 for his Milton Gallery, the self-run London enterprise of Milton-inspired works that failed commercially but raised his prestige, and it stands among his most haunting images of the poet he revered. The picture was sent to the artist’s patron William Roscoe in 1800 and descended through English collections before the Art Institute purchased it in 1973. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.