Games: Details competition

Tom Lubbock
Sunday 05 December 1999 01:02 GMT
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Details 460 came from Van Dyck's post-mortem portrait of Venetia, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed (1633). The image is ambiguous, not exactly

death-like. Is she sitting up or lying flat? Peacefully asleep or stone cold? Either way, uncertainly embodied: the rest of her

disappears under and

into the lapping bed-clothes, which then flow emptily out of the picture. It's a brilliant invention of flesh and cloth to create a gently fading

presence - perhaps deliberately commissioned by her husband to calm rumours of a violent end. The picture (not in the recent Van Dyck show) belongs to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and can be seen there when it reopens next year.

The first three correct entries came from: J Fish, London E14; M Ewart, London NW1; R McKitterick, Cambridge

In which painting by which painter can you find this plunge?

Answer on a postcard, to arrive by Friday 10 December??: DETAILS 462, IoS, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL. Three winners will each receive a bottle of champagne

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