Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker Clash on Mustafar — Print & Oil Painting

Neither man has a face in this picture. Both are painted as flat dark shapes against fire, with no feature, no colour and no rendered detail anywhere on either body, and the artist has made that work by giving them very precise silhouettes instead.

What they are standing on is the real subject. Obi-Wan holds the left half, braced wide-legged on the flat roof of a long industrial platform that runs off the bottom corner of the frame, its structure drawn as a row of dark blocks and struts. Anakin has the right, poised on a much smaller machine, a narrow body on thin jointed legs that reach down into the lava, more insect than vehicle. One man has a floor. The other has a perch.

Their blades cross at the top of the canvas in a clean X, and both of them are blue-white. That is the detail that dates the moment exactly: the two of them are still carrying the same weapon, and nothing in their hands yet tells them apart.

Everything behind is molten. Orange and scarlet cloud fills the upper half, a plume of fire goes up between the two figures, and the lower quarter is a lake of glowing rock that throws a broken second image of both platforms back up at them. The saturation measurement runs past seven-tenths and it is all one heat.

Painting a duel entirely in silhouette means giving up every expression in it, and the picture wins the trade by staging the whole argument through footing instead. Part of our Star Wars collection, next to the version fought on a single platform and another silhouetted reading of the same fight.