Malenia Leaping Through Misty Clouds — Print & Oil Painting

Half of this figure has been left as paint. The torso and the drapery are stated in broad wet strokes that never quite close into an outline, the cloud behind is pure smeared colour, and only the metal is finished: the helm, the pauldron, the jointed arm, the cased leg. The eye takes the armour as solid and everything else as weather.

The pose is a fall as much as a leap. The body is angled head up and feet down through the middle of a tall canvas, one metal leg swung forward and bent at the knee, the free arm thrown back and up to the right with a long thin blade at the end of it. Nothing is touching ground and nothing is going to for some time.

The prosthetics are the most carefully painted things here: a segmented arm of pale metal finishing in a narrow skeletal hand, a leg cased from thigh to ankle in the same alloy, both taking a cool light from the left while the cloth around them stays warm.

The palette is unusual for this collection. Dusty rose, ash grey and olive, with a red drape at the hip as the only saturated note. It has the look of a fragment cut out of a Baroque ceiling, all diagonal and cloud, and a small red seal has been set into the lower right corner. From our Elden Ring collection, and the same figure dissolved further into smoke is the fiery study. For the armour coming apart in mid fight, see the falling arm.