Two Demons Playing A Rousing Game of Chess
The inspiration for this image was the Baroque movement that appeared in the centuries that followed the Renaissance. The foremost leader of this movement and perhaps the founder was none other than the Italian painter Caravaggio. I visited galleries featuring Caravaggio's work on two occasions and was utterly dumb-struck both times. The sense of emotion and narrative to each scene coupled with the compositional elements and dynamic lighting added an element of interest in his paintings that I saw nowhere else in Italy. It's only natural that I try and imitate this style. In most of his paintings he uses a very plain earth-toned backdrop that had lots of horizontally streaking lights and deep shadows. In most cases, the foreground elements were people interacting around tables and various household furniture and common items such as cups, food and instruments. Cased in the same dark shadows, these elements appear as if there is one single spotlight shining over them, giving such stark contrast to the image. This is exactly the style I tried to replicate with this image. However, I replaced the humans and their simple clothing with various demons that I had seen in cathedrals around Italy (since there was little to no supernatural elements in Caravaggio's paintings). They play an interesting game of chess, the leftmost one admiring the pieces intently so as to form a strategy as he appears to be losing to the boastful brutish demon on the right.
