Arnold Böcklin spent the autumn of 1879 on Ischia. The Castello Alfonso, on a small island nearby, deeply impressed him during his stay. When the young, widowed Marie Berna visited Böcklin’s studio in Florence in 1880 and asked for a “picture to dream by,” the memory of that landscape must have merged with earlier memories of, for example, the islands of the dead like San Michele in Venice and Etruscan cliff-necropolises. The Isle of the Dead became one of Böcklin’s most popular pictorial works. He achieved this by combining a limited number of ideas into an impressive atmospheric composition. The motifs — island, water, and castle or vil-la by the sea — are already familiar from many of his earlier works. However, in this case they have been concentrated into a statement of the artist’s Weltanschauung. The location is sinister. The viewer’s gaze is led up the steps but can penetrate no further into the darkness. The island’s strict symmetry, the calm horizontals and verticals, the circular island surrounded by high cliff walls, and the magical lighting create an atmosphere that is both solemn and sublime, evoking a sense of stillness and other-worldliness. The ripple-less surface of the water and the boat bearing the coffin with a figure shrouded in white behind it add a melancholy tone to the whole.