Thranduil Standing in His Silver Armor — Print & Oil Painting

This is a costume plate, and it should be read as one. The figure is presented full length, standing dead centre, feet apart and both arms hanging at the sides, on a plain dark ground against a vague wall of snow and rock. There is no action, no narrative and no gesture: the subject is the clothing, photographed the way a tailor would want it photographed.

What the title calls armour is mostly not. The body is dressed in a long robe of dark textured cloth that falls to the floor, split at the front over a lighter panel, and the only true plate is at the shoulders, where two shaped pieces rise into points above the arms. Everything else is embroidery: fine silver-white line work running in branching curves down the chest, around the collar and along both sleeves, drawn as though the garment had been engraved.

The palette is almost gone. Silver, pewter, charcoal and white account for the whole figure, and the single exception is decisive: the underside of the trailing cloak, which shows a deep blood red where it folds back on the ground behind him. It is the only saturated colour in the picture and it is placed where you find it last.

Above the collar the same restraint continues. Long white-blond hair falls straight past both shoulders, a plain thin circlet crosses the brow with no ornament on it, and the face is turned very slightly up and away from us with the eyes half lowered. It is a deliberately unwelcoming expression and it is the only part of the picture doing any characterisation.

The king of the wood is written as proud, cold and considerably more interested in his own borders than in anyone else's trouble, and a portrait that gives four fifths of its attention to his tailoring has understood the assignment. From our Lord of the Rings collection, next to the antlered chair this robe was made for and the same king with the robe off and a blade out.