[Youth praying in the courtyard] [art original].

A scene from Horace Walpole's Gothic novel The castle of Otranto, with the character Theodore about to be executed in the courtyard of the castle. On the left, Theodore kneels down before the friar Jerome to pray, his shirt slipping down below his left shoulder to reveal the mark of a bloody arrow. Behind the friar stands Manfred, who ordered the execution, and several attendants; two guards holding pikes and a man carrying a sword stand behind the kneeling prisoner. At the far end of the courtyard on the right, the giant helmet sits in front of colonnades. In the background at center, the bordering colonnades are interrupted by a gray-colored section of the castle with arched windows and alcoves in which statues reside