🔗 Share this article

Loyal followers of the music superstar are creating a remarkable increase in popularity at a German art institution that displays a artwork of Shakespeare's character Ophelia, newly referenced in a track and visual production from Swift's recent release "The Life of a Showgirl".

The museum in Wiesbaden in the central German city of this location saw numerous extra visitors than typical over the recent days, as Swifties wished to see the real version of the portrait that opens the visual for "The Fate of Ophelia".

In the music video, which has been watched exceeding 65 thousand instances on online, the painting comes alive, with Taylor Swift at its heart.

"We are delighted by this interest - it's very enjoyable," a museum spokesperson commented.

The representative noted that one group had traveled from the north German urban center of Hamburg, a five-hour journey distant, while several of the attendees were U.S. citizens from a adjacent army base.

The spokesperson stated that Swifties realized the historical portrait - thought to date to 1900 - was on display when the museum team, recognizing the similarity, published an invitation on their website encouraging any Taylor Swift enthusiasts to join a dedicated guided visit.

The news then became popular on the internet, the museum said.

Online content explaining the portrait's whereabouts garnered many thousands of engagements, significantly more than the limited number of engagements that most of its content tend to get.

In the classic play, the character Ophelia, his beloved, a young noblewoman from Denmark, becomes insane and submerges.

While more obscure than the famous painting of Ophelia, the portrait also shows a woman in a long dress shown floating in a body of water, encircled by floral elements.

The picture is referenced on Swift's album cover, which shows her incompletely immersed in liquid.

"We are amazed and thrilled that this musician used this portrait from the museum as inspiration for her music video," a gallery head commented.

"This presents, of course, a excellent possibility to bring in people to the institution who don't know us so far."

"The Life of a Showgirl" earned the United Kingdom's biggest opening week of 2025, after selling 304,000 copies in the opening seven days.

In the United States, it generated exceeding 4 million equivalent record units in the United States in its opening week, according to the music chart, exceeding the record set by the British singer with her record "25" in that year.

The album is Taylor Swift's 3rd album to lead the British music chart in the current year, after "an earlier album" in the winter month and "The Tortured Poets Department", when it reappeared to first place in recently.

It is additionally the debut full-length project the singer has put out since she revealed her engagement to athlete Travis Kelce in recently and disclosed in the spring that she had reclaimed rights over her previous work.