Which is the most horrifying painting and what made it so? part 2

 This is a continuation of the previous post. If you are missing the basic premise and details, please go and check that out. One more time I am posting the painting in here. This is Henry Fuseli's "The nightmare"

Deconstructing the structure of the painting

First thing you must notice is where is the vertical. We can divide the painting into upper half and Bottom half

We are looking at; where is the first vertical in the painting. Human mind is unconsciously focused on finding the vertical structures first in any given frame. One can find there is no verticals in the top half of the painting. The first pronounced vertical we can find is on the bottom half, which is very unnatural. So, the vertical is not coming from up to down. It is going from down to up.

Which means what?

The entire image has a second read. That means the image can be flipped.

Can you see more patterns and meaning?

We can discuss more with another blog post.