Dark Angels Marine with a Spiked Winged Helm — Print & Oil Painting

Start with the helm. Two swept crests rise from the temples and curve back, sharp and slightly ragged along the edge, and behind them a spiked iron ring stands on a short stem like a sunburst bolted to the backpack. It is a great deal of ornament to hang off a fighting helmet, and it is precisely why the silhouette survives at any size.

The armour underneath is green and heavily worked. A gold aquila spreads across the chest, chain loops from the collar to the belt, a cream tabard drops to the knees, a bronze skull sits on the left knee, and small parchments sealed in red wax hang down the thigh. The paint is thin and dry over most of the plate, so it reads dusty rather than polished.

The sword is held loosely, blade up and angled back over the shoulder, in a grip that is neither a guard nor a strike. It is the most relaxed pose anywhere in this part of the collection, and it changes the character of the figure entirely.

Behind him the background is smoke, warm red banked on the left, pale grey haze on the right, and out of that haze at the right edge comes a second shape: a horse and rider drawn in white line, ghostly and unfinished, visible enough to be noticed and not enough to be identified.

The winged sword on the shoulder is the mark of the First Legion, the first of the twenty the Emperor raised, and the Dark Angels have never once been modest about the number. From our Warhammer 40.000 collection, and a brother of the same order wearing a lion pelt carries the other half of that iconography.