La defensa del Sampo

By 1896 Finland was still a grand duchy of the Russian empire, and a generation of Finnish artists was mining the Kalevala, the national folk epic, for a homegrown mythology. Gallen-Kallela took the moment when the old hero Vainamoinen, sword raised in his boat, fights off the witch Louhi. She has turned herself into a monstrous bird and swept down to snatch back the Sampo, a magical mill that grinds out wealth and fortune. He painted it in tempera, giving the water and the talons a hard, cold clarity. A Helsinki patron ordered it for his dining room, then backed out when his wife recoiled at the finished scene, and a Turku art society bought it instead.