Yennefer Vengerberg's Violet-Eyed Stare — Print & Oil Painting

Very little light has been allowed into this canvas and the measurement agrees with the eye: unlit wood panelling behind, black hair filling both sides of the frame, a black ribbon at the throat, and a face lit softly from the front. What you are looking at is a pale oval in a dark field, and that is the whole design.

The eyes are the only chromatic colour in the picture. Pale violet-blue irises with a dark ring round the outside and a small hard catchlight in each, set under heavy dark brows, and aimed slightly off the lens rather than straight down it. It is a look directed just past your shoulder, which is far more disquieting than eye contact would be.

The hair does the framing. Dense, black and curled, falling well below the shoulders on both sides, and it has been allowed to merge with the background at the outer edges so that no silhouette line exists anywhere. The face is not cut out against the dark; it emerges from it.

At the throat there is a flat black band carrying a dark star-shaped pendant with a stone set at its centre, and below that a band of white lace at the collarbone: the only pale note beneath the chin, and the thing that stops the lower half of the picture from closing up entirely.

The finish is a smooth photographic render with no visible mark-making at all, which suits a portrait that is really about two colours and a stare. Raven hair and violet eyes are the two details every account of this sorceress agrees on, and this one supplies nothing else. Part of our The Witcher collection, alongside the same woman unleashing a magic blast and the raven-feathered gown.