When Henry Fuseli’s gothic masterpiece, The Nightmare, debuted at London’s Royal Academy in 1782, it scandalized British high society. Viewers were shocked by its raw presentation of psychological vulnerability, eroticism, and supernatural dread.

For over two centuries, the public looked at the front of the canvas: a woman draped in stark, ghostly white light, paralyzed on her bed while a grotesque, ape-like incubus crouches heavily onto her chest. Yet, the true source of the canvas’s suffocating energy remained entirely invisible to the public.

It was only when the painting was cataloged by the Detroit Institute of Arts under accession  grovestreetart.com numbers 55.5.A and 55.5.B that the ultimate secret of The Nightmare was physically turned to the light. Painted directly onto the reverse side of the canvas is an unfinished, hidden artwork: Portrait of a Lady.

Art historians widely agree that this hidden woman is Anna Landolt, a Swiss woman whom Fuseli had met and fallen madly, obsessively in love with while traveling through Italy. Landolt was the niece of his close friend, Johann Kaspar Lavater. Fuseli’s passion for her was intense, consuming, and bordering on the delusional.

In private letters to Lavater, Fuseli openly detailed his vivid, explicit fantasies of possessing Landolt. He famously wrote about spending nights holding her tight-clasped in his dreams, binding her soul to his, and fiercely declaring to his friend that anyone else who touched her would be committing adultery.

However, Landolt’s father fiercely disapproved of the eccentric, volatile painter. Obliging her family’s wishes, Anna Landolt rejected Fuseli’s intense marriage proposal and quickly wed a wealthy family friend instead.


The sudden rejection utterly broke Fuseli, sending him into a spiral of furious heartbreak and creative obsession. Unable to physically possess Landolt, he weaponized his paintbrush. He took the very canvas holding her unfinished portrait, flipped it completely over, and used the reverse side to paint his ultimate revenge.

Viewed through this intimate biographical lens, the figures in The Nightmare take on a profoundly dark, personal meaning:

• The Sleeping Woman: She is no longer just a nameless victim of sleep paralysis. She serves as a direct avatar for Anna Landolt herself, cast down in total, defenseless vulnerability.
• The Squatting Incubus: The heavy, leering demon pressing the breath out of her chest represents Fuseli’s own spurned sexual desire and demonic frustration. Through the monster, Fuseli metaphorically invades her bedroom, dominating the woman who had denied him in waking life.
• The Blind Phantom Horse: Peering through the dark velvet drapes, the creature acts as a jealous, watchful voyeur, keeping guard over his eternal captive.

By painting this horrific vision on the literal flip side of Landolt’s portrait, Fuseli bound his real-world heartbreak directly to the supernatural terror on the front. It was an act of raw psychological venting—trapping his lost love under the weight of his subconscious fury forever.