Link Explores a Sandy Chamber of Snake Statues — Print & Oil Painting

The room is built as a mirror. A colossal cobra rears out of the left wall and an identical one out of the right, hoods flared, each framing a rectangular tablet of dense carved script, each with a magenta stone set above the brow. Between them the floor runs back to a broad stair and a second rank of smaller statues on the landing.

Sand has got into everything. It lies in soft drifts across the flagstones, banks up against the plinths and rounds off every hard edge in the lower half of the picture, which is what tells you how long this place has stood open.

He is dead centre and turned away, kept small enough that the architecture wins the argument. Green cap, dark bracers, black boots, a patterned shield across his back and a short blade held down in his right hand. One white winged light hovers ahead of him at the foot of the stair, and it is the brightest point in the room.

Colour is all rose-beige and warm grey, relieved only by the magenta of the gems and a few violet crystals lying on the floor, and a broad shaft of dusty light comes down from a break in the ceiling to land on the steps. Part of our Zelda collection, near the glowing circle in the Shadow Temple for the same hero alone in a very different room.