Isle of the Dead

I have chosen an allegorical painting titled “The Isle of the Dead” by Arnold Bocklin, oil on canvas, dated 

back in 1880, found at “WIKI ART” website.

Many video games were inspired by poems and paintings, in addition to other arts. Maybe the nintendo’s 

famous game ZELDA was inspired by this painting, whose mysterious and ominous-looking island was 

very similar to Bocklin’s dark islet. 

From a picture plane’s point of view, the painting’s theme appears very close to us. The horizon line 

is located almost at the bottom of the canvas. The line clearly separates the water (the foreground) from 

the island (the middle ground). The spectators are under impression as if the water represents the 

reality: our world. The isle represents as if the world beyond, the world that awaits us for exploration and 

questions that need answers. From a linear perspective the artist even included the vanishing points, 

two small lines of both sides of the isle, the points where the navy-blue sky(the background) meets the 

water. On the right side, between the h.line and vanishing points, there is small area of water 

overlapping, creating the illusion of the depth of the isle, and distance in the water. 

On the meeting point of the isle and water, the painter placed a boat with people. One of them is dressed 

in white, hooded robes, appearing as a saint, standing on front of the boat, while the other person, with a 

long golden hair and brown robes, sits and conducts the boat with oars. It is very hard not to be under 

impression as if we were those people who have just arrived to isle. But from the imagined spectator’s 

point of view I was under illusion as if I was following the boat from a great distance as a spy, or a 

witness.

Picture plane in this scenario gives us the sense as if we could touch the island: its trees blackened by 

the night’s hours and its monastery-like construction built within the giant rocks. The first reason is its 

scale, where the objects above the line are enormous; while the object below the line, in this case a lake-

like water, is very small, relatively ignored. The second reason is the value, where the water is very dark, 

actually black, while the island has very bright details, like golden-yellowish rocks, and a white building 

peeking in between the left rocks (overlapping each other). The dark(black) trees in the middle of the 

isle, with very fine contour lines, reach high into the sky almost touching the top of the canvas, 

emphasizing the whole score of the scale of the isle. The painter used crosshatching for the blackened 

trees where they bland nicely with very dark navy-blue sky. From left to right he used a shading and 

hatching techniques for the sky, contrasting from lighter to darker tones. 

It’s claimed that the painting is exhibited in a gallery in Switzerland, as well as in the MET museum, since 

there are more versions of this painting. “My” version has people on the boat, but one of the alternatives 

has only a saint-like woman standing on the island (there is no boat).