Medivh Standing with His Raven-Topped Staff — Print & Oil Painting

The staff runs the full height of the canvas and the picture is organised around it. It is planted at the bottom left, rises through the frame at a slight angle, and ends in a carved raven perched on the top with its head turned in profile and its beak parted. Below the bird the shaft carries four large pale blue cubes set into the wood and a row of thorns down one side.

The man holding it is mostly hood. A black cowl comes far forward over the brow, leaving a grey beard, a straight nose and two eyes that glow a hard violet with no whites and no pupils. Black feathers rise in a dense collar around both shoulders, and beneath them the robe is deep charcoal with heavy gold trim: a broad trapezoid gorget at the throat, gold bands down the chest, a medallion on a short chain.

Two light sources argue behind him. On the left, an arched window pours a warm apricot glow onto the stonework; on the right, a bracket on the wall holds a small blue flame. The wall between them is bare dressed stone. It is the interior of a tower and it has been painted as a cold place with one warm opening.

The colour discipline is severe. Black, charcoal, gold and stone grey, with the violet of the eyes and the blue of the sconce used four or five times in total. Saturation across the canvas is among the lowest in this group and the gold is doing all the work of making the figure legible.

The title he carried was held by one person at a time. A secret council chose a single mortal, poured the accumulated power of the office into them, and left them to fight the demon incursions alone and without acknowledgement, which meant that no monarch in any of these kingdoms knew who was doing it or why. He was the last one appointed. A portrait of him alone in his own tower, lit by one window, with a bird on a stick for company, is not far off the job description. Part of our World of Warcraft collection, alongside the same mage inside a cage of blue ribbons and the raven-masked shape he wears in shadow.