Kefka Palazzo — Print & Oil Painting

A thin stream of violet liquid pours from the vessel in his raised left hand, falls the full height of the canvas and pools at the lower left in a wide luminous stain with shapes half dissolved inside it. Everything else here is performance. That stream is the only thing actually happening.

It also fixes the moment. Kefka Palazzo, the Imperial court mage of Final Fantasy VI, broke a stalled siege by poisoning the water supply of Doma Castle against a direct order, and almost everyone inside died of it. The painting puts the act in his hand and lets him dance while he does it.

The costume is treated with the seriousness of a formal portrait. Three fanned blond plumes stand off the back of the skull, the face is white with red at the mouth and around the eyes, and a red and white striped ruff sits under the chin. Below that the motley runs riot: spotted blue and red sleeves, a patchwork of green, orange and cream at the waist, ballooned trousers, blue boots, and a long cape sweeping across the canvas in bands of rose, gold and scarlet.

The pose is pure theatre, one arm thrown up with the wrist bent, the head tipped back, the mouth open. Everything behind him is dark green and near black, which pushes the figure forward and lets the cape become the largest shape in the frame.

From our Final Fantasy collection. The other villain in this room takes the opposite route: see Sephiroth in monochrome, where the same quantity of menace arrives with no colour at all.