Darth Bane's Cold Stare Burns Through the Firelight — Print & Oil Painting

Head and shoulders, the head turned very slightly, the gaze levelled straight out of the canvas. It is painted tightly, almost clinically, and the surface of the face is where all the work has gone.

That surface is a record of damage. The scalp is bare and marked with faint dark striations; the brow is heavy and creased; a network of fine lines runs from the nose down to the jaw, and the neck below is corded and deeply furrowed. Two black marks sit beneath the eyes and taper down over the cheekbones. The skin is a cold grey-green, and it is the coldest colour anywhere in the picture.

Against it the eyes are amber, ringed in dark, and lit from inside. They are the only warm thing on the figure. Everything else about the face is shut: the mouth a straight line, the jaw set, no expression that could be named as an emotion. The stare is doing the entire job.

Fire has been put behind him and then kept at a distance. Smoke and a low orange glow fill the left of the background and fade to brown-grey on the right, out of focus, with no flame edge sharp enough to read as a specific event. A heavy grey-green cloth wraps the shoulders and throat, plain to the point of severity.

This is the Sith Lord who cut the order down to two at a time, one master and one apprentice and no more, having concluded that a Sith army would always tear itself apart from the inside. The portrait is built to match the argument: no armour, no weapon, no theatre, one man and a doctrine. From our Star Wars collection, beside his apprentice amid the flames and the gallery of dark side figures.