Alfred's Grief Beneath the Chandelier — Print & Oil Painting

Shards of glass fly across the canvas in long white streaks, dozens of them, angled steeply from the upper left toward the lower right. They are drawn as pure light rather than as objects, and they cross the figure without ever covering the face, which tells you exactly where the artist wants you to look.

The idiom is Japanese animation: clean linework, large eyes, blond hair in soft blocks, tears rendered as three or four separate highlights on the cheek. That sits a long way from anything the game itself shows, and the picture is better for the distance. It is an interpretation rather than a likeness.

He is dressed in a pale church tunic with gold braid at the collar and hem, brown leather bracers running up both forearms, and a dark cloak falling behind. Blood has been spattered across the chest and one glove. The right arm is thrown up over the head with the hand open, in a gesture that could be defence or surrender.

Above and behind him a candle chandelier burns in a stone chamber, its light catching a dark round frame on the wall and a tangle of bare branches. Part of our Bloodborne collection, alongside the hooded, wheel-bearing treatment of the same name, where none of the face is shown at all.