Isle of the Dead (MET version)

A small boat glides toward a rocky island where tall cypress trees rise like dark spears against the evening sky. In the boat stands a figure draped in white, facing a coffin that rests before them. The rowing figure guides them silently toward the shore, where pale stone tombs are carved into the cliffs. Everything about the scene suggests arrival at a final destination, a place from which the traveler will not return.

Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss painter working in the late 1800s, made several versions of this image, and this one is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He never explained exactly what it meant, once calling it simply "a picture for dreaming." A widow who lost her husband asked him to paint "a picture to dream by," and the white-clad figure may represent her grief. The painting struck a nerve across Europe. Sigmund Freud hung a print in his office, and it inspired music, novels, and countless imitations. Its power comes partly from that mystery, since Böcklin leaves you to fill in the story yourself.