Daenerys Targaryen Before a Carved Dragon Sigil — Print & Oil Painting

The wall behind her is the reason to stop. Cut into grey stone, so shallow that it barely holds any shadow, is a dragon with three necks and both wings spread, filling the entire upper half of the panel; a circular device sits behind it, and the whole relief has been left ghost-pale, scratched and worn as though the room it belongs to has not been used for a long time.

The figure is placed slightly left of that symmetry and refuses to line up with it. She stands with her weight on one leg, one hand gathering the skirt, her head turned back over the near shoulder, so the vertical of the body cuts across the centre of the carved wings rather than sitting under them.

Everything about the gown is smooth in a picture where everything else is rough. Lilac silk, draped over one shoulder and left bare at the other, wrapped in soft horizontal folds at the waist and falling to a train that spreads across the floor, fastened with a small gold clasp shaped like a coiled dragon. It is the only clean surface anywhere on the canvas.

The arms of the house are a three-headed dragon, red on black, one head for Aegon and one for each of the sisters he conquered with. Rendering it pale on grey drains the heraldry of its colour and leaves it looking like a monument. Part of our Game of Thrones collection, alongside the portrait beneath flying dragons, which puts the same sigil back into the sky.