Slobbering Darkness

Portret żony / Wife portrait • Zdzisław Beksiński • 1956/1957

Persona • Ingmar Bergman • 1966

薔薇の葬列 (Funeral Parade of Roses) • Toshio Matsumoto • 1969

The Raven, 1883 (published 1884)
By
Gustave Doré (1832–1883)
Harper & Brothers edition, New York, 1884
Steel engraving

In this plate Doré represents Death as a skeletal figure wrapped in heavy drapery, seated on a great sphere that rises from a bank of clouds. A scythe rests at its side, the blade curving toward the lower left, while the bony hands hold an object in the lap that reads as an hourglass. Below, a single raven crosses the clouded surface of the sphere, and the upper half of the image opens onto a dark sky scattered with stars. Everything is worked in strong tonal contrast, with the pale figure and the lit edge of the globe set against the surrounding blackness.

Death and the Maiden, Denis Forkas, 2016