Le Démon assis

Vrubel painted this in 1890, the year he moved to Moscow, and it was his first large canvas there. The demon comes out of a poem by Lermontov about a fallen spirit who falls in love with a Georgian princess and destroys her with a kiss, and Vrubel would return to the figure for the rest of his life. He built the surface with a palette knife in blunt facets, so the rocks and the sky in their scarlet sunset look like broken glass or mosaic. The demon does not rage. He sits hunched, wedged between the top and bottom of the frame, too large for the space he is given, his hands locked around his knees.