Invidia - 7 Deadly Sins

Hello! Here is a drawing done for a TAG (Telephone Art Games – a kind of "grapevine game" with drawings) on the theme of the 7 Deadly Sins  Envy was randomly assigned to me.

For this TAG, the rules were: to keep the character’s original design (female, same hair / eye / skin color), to adjust the pose to our assigned sin while trying to stay close to the previous artist’s pose, to change all of the character’s style to correspond to the assigned sin, and to not add any background.

Here is the (non-exhautive) list of classical symbols used here to represent Envy:

    - The colors:

    1. Green is traditionally associated to Envy, which is why I designed a green gown.

    2. Yellow. The artists usually represent Envy as a woman with yellowish skin. Since I had to keep the character’s original skin colour, I used yellow to paint some elements of the gown’s ornaments.

    - The snake: it is one of the two animals associated to Envy (the other one is a vicious dog or a scrawny bitch (the female dog) with a bone in its mouth or at its paws.) Representing the snake is a reminder of the animal in the Garden of Eden; it is the symbol of temptation. But the choice of a snake can also come from the resentment of envy, a venom that eats away from the inside and that makes the happiness of people around us an obsession. Artists often represented the snake(s) coming out of the character’s hair.

    - The tree and the apple:  they of course remind of the original sin. I represented a leafless knotted tree coming out of the hair and only bearing one apple. Like the snake winding around the hair, this representation is used to show that envy seizes the character’s mind (the tree comes out of the head which is the seat of mind and soul). And the object of desire becomes its only preoccupation (the tree is dry because there is no more space for life’s little happinesses – and it bears only one fruit: the object of the obsession.)

    - The right hand which touches the closed eye: the right hand hides the right eye; the right side represents the father, the masculine, justice, salvation, etc. If the right eye is hidden, it’s probably to suggest the idea that no senses will prevent the subject from giving in to covetousness. The subject only sees this desire and nothing else matters. Symmetrically, I drew the left hand extended towards the object of desire (symbolized by the apple) – the left side representing the feminine, the dark side of man, Eve tempted by the snake.

Another possible representation is that of a one-eyed character. But I found more meaningful to work on the concept of the right eye hidden by the hand.

Note that the latin word for Envy is invidia coming from the verb invidere which is composed of the prefix in- (1- privative or negative meaning | 2- "in, on") and the verb videre meaning "see, observe; understand". The common meaning of invidere is "be envious, be jealous of" but the very interesting thing is that the primitive meaning is "look maliciously at, cast an evil eye upon."

    - The number 3: the sin of Envy is the third worst sin. I drew some of the elements of the gown’s ornaments in groups of three to evoke this and they’re mostly placed on the gown’s left side.

In addition to these symbols, I chose to design the gown to insist on the concept of poison of envy that locks the subject in their destructive obsession, hence the idea of drawing the crinoline that puts the character in a cage, the chains and handcuffs chaining her to her desire but at the same time preventing her from attaining the object of her covetousness (a bit like the torture of Tantalus), the needles that pin down the gown representing a hindered subject who can’t raise their mind high enough to fend off envy and to reach the light of reason (one part of the gown is made with rooster’s feathers and the rooster is a symbol of light, of resurgence, of rebirth.)

Ta-dah! I hope that these explanations gave you the keys to understanding my representation of the sin of Envy.