The Oath on the Rütli

Henry Fuseli painted The Oath on the Rütli around 1780, depicting the legendary founding moment of the Swiss Confederation when representatives of the forest cantons swore their oath of mutual defense on the Rütli meadow in 1291. Fuseli was Swiss by birth — born in Zurich in 1741 before settling permanently in London — and his engagement with Swiss national mythology gave his rendering of this founding scene a personal resonance beyond its political content. The upraised arms and dramatic night setting of the oath-swearers anticipate the civic oath composition that David would make canonical in the Oath of the Horatii five years later, though Fuseli's dramatic intensity is characteristically more extravagant than David's classical restraint.

Fuseli composes the oath scene with muscular dynamism and exaggerated gestures. The dramatic nocturnal lighting creates heroic determination that anticipates Romantic treatment of national myth.