John Martin, 'The Great Day of his Wrath', 1851-3

My eye is drawn to the void in the centre of the canvas. Darkness is hard to depict well, but in this painting John Martin makes it the heart of the picture. The crumbling, lightning-shattered rocks are tumbling towards paint so black, it is simply a hole in the canvas. It sucks me in, like the other helpless scraps of humanity in the foreground, and the blackness spills forward, overflowing towards the viewer like a river of death. Martin's canvas surrounds the viewer, disorientating them and engulfing them. It is as if they are there in the foreground, scrabbling on the slope and pushing away the bodies to selfishly save themselves.

Martin’s use of scale and perspective emphasise the three dimensionality and endless depth right back to the fierce red burn of the sun in the centre. The painting is huge but it is not all about grand scale – what keeps you looking are the details. In the foreground, the focus is on suffering individuals: the strain on the bodies is agonising, palpable. A woman on the right has one arm outstretched to the sky, pleading to a higher power for mercy, even as others are pulling her down, highlighting the futile efforts of humanity in the face of God. There is no literal or metaphorical path to redemption in sight. The only path is downwards, into the void.

The 'mountains' on the right are actually a Minas Tirith-like city which has been shattered stone by stone. Like Hokusai's Great Wave, Martin has captured the moment when the crest becomes top-heavy and topples the whole body of water over. But this is not water, it is rock. And the columns are not just buildings, they represent civilisation. You can look at this painting upside down and it is still as thrilling because Martin created a world beyond rules. But ultimately you come back to its black heart: the world will end as it began, in nothingness.

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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 ...

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 wo...

Artemisia Gentileschi, 'Jael and Sisera', c.1620

My eye firstly notices the hand wielding the hammer above the unsuspecting man's head. Gentileschi is depicting a new and particularly horrible kind of weapon here instead of the huge sword she gave Judith to slice Holofernes' head off in 1620. The tent peg seems all the more violent, especially as the viewer is looking at the split second before the deed has been committed. Moreover, the gaze of the women (Jael) is focused and calm, making the piece seem unnerving. This is not a moment of hesitation but a snapshot of action - the woman has made up her mind and will commit to this murder. The viewer can only imagine how Gentileschi would have depicted the bloody aftermath, in her usual violent and tenebristic way. The fact that the artist has signed her name in the tomb-like stone above the man is significant - she is signing his life away in this painting, sending him swiftly to the grave. The body of the man (Sisera) is also interestingly depicted. He lies in a rather eff...

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