The Demon Downcast

Mikhail Vrubel's 'The Demon Downcast' of 1902 is the third and final work in his obsessive Demon trilogy, completed under conditions of acute psychological deterioration that would lead to his permanent institutionalization later that year. The Demon — drawn from Lermontov's 1839 Romantic poem — had occupied Vrubel since 1890. Where the first Demon brooded in philosophical isolation and the 'Demon Flying' soared over the Caucasus, the 'Demon Downcast' shows the fallen creature prostrate and broken in a mountain gorge, his wings shattered, his body contorted in defeat. Vrubel worked on the painting even as it hung at exhibition, reportedly repainting the face repeatedly before visitors, unable to resolve an image that was becoming a record of his own disintegration. The Tretyakov Gallery holds all three major Demon paintings, and the 'Downcast' is widely considered the most disturbing and powerful — a masterpiece that cost its maker his sanity.

Vrubel's signature fragmented brushwork — short, faceted strokes that decompose the surface into crystalline planes — reaches its most extreme development here. The technique reinforces the subject's dissolution, the surface itself seeming to fracture like the fallen angel.