40×64 oil on canvas

12×9 oil on panel

“I will marry my daughter; she is the image of my dead wife, and no other bride can be found to enable me to keep my promise to her,” said the Princess’s father. “It is forbidden for a father to marry his daughter,” they said, “nothing but evil could spring from such a sin.” In desperation and horror, she buys herself time by asking for three beautiful gowns and, “a mantle made of a thousand skins of rough fur sewn together.” She escapes by disguising herself in the fur mantle and staining her face and hands black with walnut-juice. I’ve depicted the servant in her household who stitched the collected furs into a mantle for the princess. Differentiation and awakening require us to call up parts of our psyche, even the most utilitarian parts of us have a vital role to play.