Red Death

Last May, the bunny asked me to illustrate one her favorite short stories: "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe ( you can click the picture for better view of the illustration). I never heard of this story before the bunny introduced it to me, so I read it and what I found was quite an interesting story. The short story was part of the book "Short Stories and Essays of Edgar Allan Poe," a compilation of the writer’s work. Set during the early middle ages, Poe really captured the horror in the medieval atmosphere, though in a exaggerate way, and embodies the Victorian taste of gothic romances, which I also like. He presents the Red Death as a parallel form of the Black Death, if only grislier, but just as contagious and fatal. The protagonist, Prince Prospero, in his belief that such a lowly thing as Death cannot even reach the hem of his robes, defies it by hiding in a remote castle with his courtiers, abandoning the rest of the country to the ravenous fever of the malady while they go on with their excesses. Irony then strikes upon the celebration of masque, when an unexpected figure visits them.

The illustration was part of my project with the bunny to illustrate some of her favorite fairy tales and other stories (The first one was the Beauty and the Beast. The second one was a scene from the Arabian Nights, and this was the third one. The fourth is supposedly a scene from Alice in Wonderland, but I’m still working on Red Death.) I no longer had the plan to finish it because I revised it in a new canvass.

The work was somehow Van Eyck-ish, but I had to make it darker for the gothic novel atmosphere and that Allan Poe flavour. I'm working on a revision, which is still in pencil, somehow improving the clothing. Before, their clothing and postures was based on Netherlandish interpretation of angels: plain robes, medieval virgin hair, and calm faces.

The figure of Death, on the seventh hall, is based from Bernt Notke’s Danse Macabre or the Dance of Death (you can click the picture for larger view). It is a wonderful work depicting the mortality of people, rich or poor, and they dance with death as a symbol of reunification with it, and to tell how Death makes everyone equals. This kind of metaphor was became more widely spread because of the bubonic plague in Europe, as shown in the many works of art that features this, from poetry to paintings. One of the famous Danse Macabre series were the woodcuts created by Hans Holbein.

To all the viewers of this blog, thank you so much for your little time. I hope you enjoyed your travel to my own realm. :)