Fans recognize parallels to Friedrich Heyser’s painting.
A blonde woman in a white dress lies lifeless on the shore of a lake. Then a melody sounds, the woman wakes up, stands up – and the dance begins. This is how the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” from Taylor Swift’s latest album starts. This image reference brought an unexpected rush of visitors to the Hessian State Museum in Wiesbaden: last weekend (October 11th and 12th) the house welcomed hundreds of additional guests.
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The reason: an Art Nouveau painting of Ophelia, Hamlet’s lover from Shakespeare’s work of the same name, which is on display there. It has become the target of countless Swifties who believe they recognize Ophelia from Swift’s music video in the work.
Inspired by the Art Nouveau painter Heyser
According to the museum, it is not yet officially known which motif actually served as a template for the video, as “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” reports. However, the direct comparison shows clear parallels to the work of the Art Nouveau painter Friedrich Heyser (1857–1921) from the museum’s collection, explains director Andreas Henning. The pose, white robe and background are clearly inspired by this painting.
This is what Heyser’s original painting looks like
Swifties behave respectfully
“We are surprised and happy that Taylor Swift used this painting from the Wiesbaden Museum as a model in her video,” said Henning, according to “Stern”. “This is of course a great opportunity to bring people to the museum who didn’t know us before.”
Many Swifties have already visited the museum – and they treated the art with great respect. The house has tried to contact the singer, but so far without success, says Henning: “I would like to show Taylor Swift the original painting.”
“The Fate of Ophelia” breaks records
“The Fate of Ophelia” is the first track on Swift’s new album THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL, which broke all chart records. According to Billboard, all twelve songs from the album currently occupy positions one through twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 – consistently. Swift is making history: Since the charts were introduced in the 1950s, no album has managed to hold all of the top positions at the same time.
In the first week of release, Swift sold 3,479,500 albums in the USA, according to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Since the data company Luminate began tracking sales, downloads and streams for the Billboard charts in 1991, no album has achieved a higher first week number than THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL.
Swift also set another record with the song: She is now the artist with the most songs that go straight to number one in the charts. A total of eight of their titles have achieved this position so far. In the U.S., “The Fate of Ophelia” was streamed 92.5 million times and played on radio 38.5 million times, according to Variety. The track has almost 200 million streams on Spotify.
Swift’s twelfth studio album
THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL is the US megastar’s twelfth studio album. It was released on October 3, 2025 by Republic Records. In it, Swift processes her impressions and emotions during the “Eras Tour”. First and foremost, however, it is an album about falling in love – with her fiancé Travis Kelce.