The Weird Sisters (Shakespeare, MacBeth, Act 1, Scene 3)

John Raphael Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Smith’s mezzotint reproduces Fuseli’s striking conception of the witches as first encountered by Macbeth and Banquo in Shakespeare’s play (act 1, scene 3), prompting Banquo to ask: "What are theseSo wither’d and wild in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,And yet are on’t?.../ You seem to understand me, By each at once her chappy finger laying /Upon her skinny lips . . ." After a seven-year sojourn in Rome, Fuseli settled in London in 1779 and became known for painting imaginative and disturbing subjects. The overlapping, profile presentation of the witches echoes classical reliefs, but their features, gestures, and flying skull-headed companion demonstrate an equal familiarity with macabre precedents in the work of Italian painters such as Domenico Veneziano and Salvator Rosa.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art