Satan's coral tentacles sweep over a heap of golden sleepers

A red-gold field in which Satan — beautiful, androgynous, half-turned — sweeps forward on great coral-red tentacles that fan out like the ribs of a shell or the arms of an anemone, trailing through the water-thick air. Beneath and around him lie the bodies of the drowned or the entranced, tangled together in warm gold and rose flesh, eyes closed, limbs slack, indistinguishable from the treasure they were promised. Delville painted it in 1895 for the Salon de la Rose+Croix; it hangs in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and remains the defining image of Belgian Symbolism.

Jean Delville (1867–1953) was the most uncompromising of the Belgian Symbolists — a painter, poet and Theosophist who believed art should be an initiation rather than a decoration. He founded the Salon d'Art Idéaliste in Brussels, taught at the academies of Glasgow and Brussels, and pursued a vision of spiritual evolution through the human figure that has no real parallel in European painting.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.