Depiction of Shakespeare character by Friedrich Heyser believed to have inspired pop superstar’s new music video
A 200-year-old museum in Germany has found itself in the eye of a storm of delighted Taylor Swift fans when it emerged that one of the probable inspirations for the music video of her new song The Fate of Ophelia was hanging on its wall.
In the opening scene of the clip for the first song on Swift’s blockbuster new album The Life of a Showgirl, one of the world’s biggest pop stars assumes the role of the tragic Shakespearean character. The video, released earlier this month, was watched more than 27m times on YouTube in the first three days.
Since then, fans have been flocking to Museum Wiesbaden in the western German city to see a painting by Friedrich Heyser from about 1900 that appears to have served as the model for Swift’s own take.
“We are having an absolute Ophelia run at the moment and are quite surprised and happy about it,” a museum spokesperson, Susanne Hirschmann, said on Thursday.
