[1] This canvas represents a passage from the play Henry VIII, Act IV, scene 2, by William Shakespeare, where Queen Catherine of Aragon has a macabre dream of her own end after being banished in favour of Anne Boleyn.

The Queen is lying on her deathbed, and she raises her left arm towards the crown offered to her by several partially naked female ghostly apparitions, in an emotion that surprises her servant sitting at her bedside, at the foot of a lyre and a sculpture.

In the Shakespearean text the spirits wear garlands and oval masks known as visards, while holding palm or laurel branches, but Fuseli omitted these details.

[2] There is a painting depicting Catherine alone (probably a study for this work) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

[3] The painting was commissioned by the fifth baronet of Upton Sussex, Sir Robert Smyth, in 1780.