Incense

Khnopff designed the frame for this picture himself, and it still has it, with the Latin words DEO DEI along the top. Inside, his model is once again his sister Marguerite, though she has almost disappeared. Only her face and her gloved hands show. The rest of her is buried under a heavy brocade cope, the long cloak a priest wears in procession, and its silk, embroidered with a repeated stylised thistle, fills nearly half the canvas. A halo stands behind her head, and she holds up a slender object on a stem. The colours stay within a narrow range of browns, sharp in the folds of the cloth and dissolving into pale light behind her. The Musée d'Orsay bought the painting in 2007, with financial support from the Japanese media group Yomiuri Shimbun.