Loki Smirks While Seated on Asgard's Golden Throne — Print & Oil Painting

It is worth saying at the outset that this is photographic rather than painted. The leather holds a real specular sheen, the skin carries pores and stubble, the depth of field falls away behind the head exactly as a long lens makes it fall, and the sunlight comes through a genuine atmospheric haze. No brush has been anywhere near it.

He is on the throne without being in it. Seated on the front edge with both feet planted and the knees apart, he leans forward with his forearms across his thighs and both hands loosely stacked on a staff held upright between them. The head is level, the eyes come straight at us, and one corner of the mouth is lifted. It is the posture of somebody who has sat down for a moment rather than taken possession.

The costume is layered and worn. Black leather trousers and heavy boots, a quilted green tunic with a diamond pattern across the chest, a long gold breastplate scrolled with engraving, plated vambraces on both forearms and a green cape falling behind the shoulder. There is no helmet anywhere in the picture, which leaves the black hair swept straight back off the forehead as the only thing framing the face.

Around him the hall has seen better centuries. Carved gold panelling rises on the left, broken masonry and a fallen column lie behind the seat, and the whole background dissolves into a warm gold and olive glare with the sky burning white at the top right. Orange leads the measurement with yellow behind it and the brightness kept low, which is the metal and the haze accounting for almost everything.

He has had that seat more than once and has never kept it. The comics give the king of Asgard an annual sleep in which his strength is restored and the realm is left open, and each time it has come round this character has claimed the throne as the elder son by adoption and taken it before his brother could. Each time, the moment something genuinely dangerous arrived at the gates, he abandoned it and left. Part of our Marvel collection, next to the same smirk delivered from a low crouch and a three quarter portrait among green and crimson strokes.