Archangel Imperius — Print & Oil Painting

Gold behaves unusually here. The armour is not polished but scored and pitted, with a warm brown patina down in the recesses and bright edges wherever the plate turns, so it reads as very old metal kept in service rather than as treasure.

The figure stands square to the viewer at three-quarter length: a high fluted helm with a raised central ridge and no face inside it, a broad collar of overlapping plates, a heavy pauldron on each shoulder, and a spear held across the body with the blade angled down to the right. That blade carries the only saturated colour on the figure, molten orange at the core cooling to red along the edges.

A ring hangs above the helm at a slight tilt, a plain flat circle of gold touching nothing, and behind one shoulder a great fan of white and yellow fire opens out. The artist has painted the wing as light rather than as feathers, which is the correct reading for this world.

This is the Archangel of Valor, who sits on the Angiris Council and commands the armies of the High Heavens, and whose spear Solarion is said to have been forged in a dying star. The background is kept almost bare, a dark bronze field with a few drifting sparks, so that nothing competes. From our Diablo collection, alongside Divine Lightning Over Sanctuary's Ruins, where angelic light arrives with no body attached to it.