Unlock the complex clues hidden inside the true crime masterpiece of art history 1793

The two feathers

Compounding this friction between the turbulent flow and the melancholy stillness of Marat’s disparate hands is David’s seemingly redundant decision to include in the abstract scene not a single ink-dipped quill, but a single quill. Between the lifeless fingers of his right hand, Marat pinches a writing quill, still wet with ink. Follow its column up from the ground, past the white column, to the overturned box that Marat used as a desk, and we will discover a second quill lying beside the crouching inkwell. This dark feather tip points menacingly in the direction of the fatal stab wound, and poses a pointed question: Was it the knife or the words that killed Marat? In times of heated politics, it is not at all clear which is stronger, the pen or the sword. As we will see, in David’s painting, the feather and the blade are themselves cognate. They sharpen each other.

The two letters

Once discovered, the evidence in the painting suddenly multiplies. Side by side in the center of the painting, we find not one but two letters, each composed by a different hand. Between the lines of these two documents, the plot of the entire painting is written. The note that Marat holds in his left hand is placed by the artist in such a way that we can easily read how Corday, unknown to Marat, has tricked him into inviting her in, taking advantage of his benevolent nature: “It is enough that I am so unhappy,” Corday deceptively pleads in her letter, “that I have a right to your kindness.” The message is clear: it was Marat’s kindness that killed him.

Louvre Museum / Matthieu Rabaud

Just below Corday’s letter, teetering on the edge of the box, is another letter written by Marat himself—the document he was apparently writing when she struck it. This banknote was preserved by Essenat (or Revolutionary Money), which scholars believe to be the first depiction of paper currency in Western art. In his letter, Marat faithfully pledged five pounds to the suffering friend of the revolution: “That mother of five children whose husband died in defense of the fatherland.” We are told that, even in death, Marat oozes generosity.

The two women

The two characters do more than draw the themes of seduction and lying, kindness and redemption, against which the story of the painting revolves. The two letters conjure ghosts – two of them. The first is Corday, the conniving assassin who sneaks into Marat’s house with a long knife under her shawl. The second, also unseen, is the suffering widow whom Marat intended to help, whose husband had died fighting for the Republic. The confrontation between female forces, one embodying good and the other evil, has a long tradition in the history of art. For centuries, artists have depicted the struggle between holiness and sinfulness as a bitter struggle between strong women. Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese’s famous Allegory of Virtue and Vice, 1565, depicts a woman urging Hercules to honor while another, with a long knife hidden behind her back, tempts him toward pleasure. David updates the allegory for the age of revolution. In Marat’s death, it is the soul of the nation that is at stake.