ANA MIRALLES
DJINN
La Favorite (T.1), Dargaud 2001
Original plate n° 21 with its seven preparatory steps in graphite on tracing paper.
Signed. Watercolor and India ink on paper
32 × 41.5 cm (12.6 × 16.34 in.)
First strip: three boxes. Second strip: two boxes. Finally, closing this ineluctable construction, a strip of a single square, almost panoramic. A convergence as fatal as the vice of desire: the strip in question deserves such care. Because it locks a key of the saga, the seduction of Lady Nelly Nelson by Jade, the new favorite of Sultan Murati - and his formidable weapon. Jade, still on the orders of the sultan, will then seduce Lord Nelson, Nelly's husband. Around this ménage à trois will develop a saga whose richness and scope are no longer to be proven. While the two women move away towards their inevitable embrace, crossing a decor of fountains and basins worthy of the orientalist Jean-Léon Gérôme - and moreover inspired by him -, two men remain face to face: a young British diplomat and an old Ottoman potentate waging a hushed war. Are they the masters of the game? They may still believe so, but the reader of this plate has already understood that the tide has turned. It will have been enough, a few pages earlier, for the Victorian rigor to bend before the sulfurous charm of a djinn.
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