The Branded Assassin — Print & Oil Painting

Rain, and a man in profile who has stopped caring about it. Corvo stands three-quarters turned away, the folding blade already open and held low along his thigh, his head tipped forward so the mask sits pushed up on his brow like a welder's visor. The gesture is small and it changes everything: for once you can see the human jaw and mouth underneath, wet and set.

The Mark does the lighting. Held at the level of his temple, the branded hand throws a cold blue-white glare across the underside of the mask and the line of his cheek, and the artist has let that light die within a few inches — beyond it the coat is nothing but dark shapes and a suggestion of buckles. It is a torch-under-the-chin effect used seriously rather than for melodrama.

Behind him the storm has been painted as vertical streaks, hundreds of them, dragged top to bottom across the whole canvas. They flatten the background into a grey field and push the figure forward, and they give the piece a texture that survives at any size: from across a room it reads as static, up close as rain.

From our Dishonored collection, alongside The Phantom Assassin and Moments of Intrigue and Betrayal.