Artwork Information

This engraving is the only record of Henry Fuseli's lost original oil painting. The print is inscribed:

ADAM resolved to share the fate of EVE

(the Guardian Angels leaving the Garden) of death

Consort with thee, death is to me as life;

Our state cannot be sever'd, we are one,

One flesh; to loose thee were to loose myself…

As Peter Tomory notes, for Fuseli this represents the moment when Woman assumes the dominant and decision-making role, with all the dangers inherent in such a proposition! (Monsters and Maidens, 2004)