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The Isle of the Dead - Arnold Böcklin (Version V, 1886)

The Isle of the Dead (Die Toteninsel) is the name of five paintings by Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin, created between 1880 and 1886 and housed in Basel, New York, Berlin, and Leipzig. At the center of the composition, we find the rocky emergence that gives the name of the composition: the Isle of the Dead, indeed. The surface of this limestone massif is animated by steep megalithic walls, stone lions, white temple structures, and mysterious sepulchral chambers: opposing the natural horizontality of the rocks, which open in a semicircle before the viewer's gaze, are these artifacts, which are elevated by a verticality echoed in the dense cypress forest. The cypress trees are traditionally associated with cemeteries and mourning: Böcklin embraces this symbolic interpretation and, gathering them into a solid and compact volumetric arrangement, paints them grim, overwhelming, tinting them with a dark green that only enhances the rarefied and silent atmosphere that permeates this painting. The overall impression is that of a spectacle of desolation immersed in a mysterious and hypnotic atmosphere. [source Wikipedia]