Link on Horseback Amid a Zelda Icons Mural — Print & Oil Painting

Read the borders first. A band of objects runs along the bottom edge of the canvas and another along the top: a hammer, a bow, small keys, a harp, a spiked mask with orange eyes, an ocarina, a boomerang, a bomb, hearts and rupees, and the golden Triforce set above the winged crest of Hyrule. They are painted like a museum case, each one isolated on the ochre ground with a brown scroll pattern running between them.

The middle band is where the characters live, and they are laid out across it like figures on a frieze rather than staged in a scene. Link rides at the centre on a chestnut horse with a white mane, sword raised above his head, a blue shield strapped to his left arm, a small blue fairy hovering at his shoulder. He is the only figure actually in motion.

The rest stand or float where they were put. Ganondorf kneels to the left, green-skinned and red-bearded, one hand on a great sword and the other holding a golden trident. A shadow-dark double of Link squares up further left with his own blade, two round blue and green blobs at his feet. To the right: Zelda in her crown and long skirt, a hovering figure with long red hair painted in the manner of the series' great fairies, and Midna riding Wolf Link with her stone headpiece on.

Two landmarks are drawn behind them in plain brown outline, a castle and a ranch, deliberately flattened so that they never become a landscape. The support is a coarse ochre canvas whose weave shows through everywhere, which is what makes the piece read as a tapestry rather than as a poster. It sits in our Zelda collection. See the poster of many Links for another inventory of the series, and the gallop with sword raised for that same rider on his own.