Egon Schiele, 'Dead Mother', 1910

My eye is drawn to the hand. Those long, bony fingers are so characteristic of Schiele but here they are particularly skeletal and deathly – the veins seem to have been injected with poison. And they are a warning right in the foreground of the painting that keeps the viewer at bay as an outsider to this incredibly intimate relationship between mother and child, and sets the tone of death and mortality which hangs over the whole image. The mother cradles her child in a womb-like shroud, alluding to childbirth and the death of the mother explained in the title. She seems desperate to feel that bodily connection with her child, highlighted by the emphasis on her craned neck as she tries to connect to the baby. There is a clear link between the mother’s bent neck and the child’s bent neck, again emphasising their longing to be with each other. However, the darkness around the child is almost like ropes, with flecks of white in the painting making it look as though the darkness is wound around the baby, stopping it from escaping. The child also wants that connection with its mother, seen by the hand reaching up and trying to pierce the ropes of darkness, but the more you look at those flecks of white, the more the painting surface seems fluid and anxious and the image turns into one of loss rather than closeness. Their pattern creates a circle, like the circle of life which is clearly represented not only through the circle of the womb that the child seems to be trapped in, but also through the connection to birth and the death or near-death like state that the mother now finds herself in.

The composition of the painting means that the action is happening very close to the surface of the canvas. The figures dissolve into darkness, apart from the face and hands of the mother and child, and the amniotic sac-like depiction of the small, flesh coloured area surrounding the child. The strong linear strokes on the mother’s face suggest wrinkles, dark circles around her eyes and her gaunt, prominent bone structure but also emphasise surface, flattening her features and adding to the depiction of the mother as worn, tired and being consumed by the darkness of grief and mourning. All this leads me to start seeing the painting in a different light: as a representation of different stages in the same woman’s life – the ‘baby’ is now youth – warmly lit and softly coloured, eyelashes, pink lips, rounded and the ‘aged’ woman is clinging onto it helplessly and hopelessly. Is it even her hand, or the hand of death that creeps into the bottom left?

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Nicola Pisano, 'Adoration of the Magi', Pisa Baptistery Pulpit Panel

In this complex, lively, exciting pulpit panel the eye looks up towards the monumentality of the Virgin, who commands this scene. She is massive and powerful, the largest figure with thick swathes of drapery delineating her forcefully protruding knees out into the viewer's space. Seated but still retaining dominance, she defines the classicising style of Nicola Pisano, witnessed throughout the panels of his pulpit in Pisa. Many writers have described the style - Eloise Angiola for instance, refers to the 'sophisticated understanding of classical prototypes to create heroic human forms' in Nicola's pulpit. Certainly in Pisa the prominent debris from the classical past remained visible and Nicola easily had access to various ancient sarcophagi for direct emulation here. The Virgin's features with her serene expression and curled hair beneath the mantle are in fact quite androgenous. She quickly assumes the position of a monumental Roman Emperor or Senator commanding

Marianne von Werekin, 'Sunrise', 1920

An endless line of men that tug the rope of a small boat soon disappear into murky, burning red waters beyond. Colour is fantastical, mystical and otherworldly, producing an atmosphere far from reality. This is the Symbolist work of Marianne von Werefkin, part of the German Expressionists that worked in Munich from the 1910s. A movement so often dominated by the male names of the time – Kandinsky especially – Werefkin was a vital participant, expanding the range of art produced and displayed, complementing her work with art theory and written sources, as well as creating her own Salon upon her arrival in Munich. It is easy to get lost in biography with a piece such as this. Wasted, human potential seems to be at the heart of this work, signalled by the endless line of men pushing forward towards the edge of the picture plane. There is a sense of struggle and a universality to the suffering through the portrayal of faceless men in similar blue tones. Looking at the date produced of 19

Mark Rothko, 'Light Red over Black', 1957

My eye is not drawn to the painting itself but the title of the painting, 'Light Red Over Black'. We would automatically think that the black is on top of a red background, but Rothko has flipped this around, subverting the title just like he subverting the meaning of what it was to be an artist and what Art actually was. During this time, art was going through rapid changes, with abstract expressionism coming into full force (Rothko, Pollock). But Rothko showed that all this change was for the good, even if for him, it was short lived. The colour red in this painting is searing and the black struggles to fully cover this velvety border, especially at the bottom of the canvas. Unlike the black squares which have a hazy quality to their edges, the red is clear and impregnable. It is hard to figure out what this represents - the Tate has suggested a window perhaps, but if it is a window then what are we looking out into? Perhaps it is night, or perhaps the viewer is catching a

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