The Old Man and Death

This 1775 painting of The Old Man and Death treats a classical moral theme through Wright's characteristically dramatic lighting. The subject, drawn from Aesop's fable, shows an exhausted old laborer who calls upon Death but then begs to be spared when the figure actually appears. Wright mastered oil on canvas chiaroscuro effects inspired by Dutch nocturnal painters and Caravaggio, creating scenes lit by single artificial sources—candles, furnaces, molten metal—that gave his subjects a...

Wright employs dramatic chiaroscuro to heighten the encounter between the living and the spectral, using his mastery of artificial light effects to create a scene of philosophical gravity.