The Death of Marat: Unlocking the complex clues hidden inside art history's 1793 true crime masterpiece

BBC ^ | 10/29/2025 | Kelly Grovier

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat is a deceptively simple image of a real-life murder. But a closer look at David's iconic painting reveals the political messages contained within.

Great art makes us do a double take. It makes us look, then look again. Take The Death of Marat, 1793, perhaps the most famous crime scene depiction of the past 250 years. At first glance, the portrayal of the murdered body of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, stabbed to death in his bath on 13 July 1793, could hardly be simpler. The slain journalist, who had agitated for the execution of King Louis XVI, slumps towards us – his body framed by the vast flickering emptiness that stretches above him.

Warning: This article contains descriptions and images of violence that some readers may find upsetting

Lean in closer, however, and Jacques-Louis David's iconic painting begins to break down into a complex puzzle of double details that unsettle the bottom half of the canvas – two quills, two dates, two letters, two absent women, two boxes, two signatures, two dead bodies. The cacophony of contrary clues draws us in, transforming us from passive observers of a straightforward snapshot of history to forensic detectives actively engaged in solving a deeper mystery, one in which the artist himself is suspected of having tampered with the evidence.

David's The Death of Marat is featured in a major exhibition at the Louvre in Paris (Credit: Marat assassiné/Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (Bruxelles)/J Geleyns)

David's portrait exalts Marat, transfiguring him from a sickly real-life person, who required lengthy medicinal baths to soothe a chronic skin disease, into a sacrificed secular Messiah. To amplify that elevation from infirmed mortal to mystical martyr, David laces his painting with decodable ciphers and echoes...

[Red Badger]

Intellectuals sure like to read a lot into a painting that may not actually exist.....................

[Red Badger]

Intellectuals sure like to read a lot into a painting that may not actually exist.....................

[MurrietaMadman]

Poor old Marat

[montag813]

Charlotte Corday was right to kill this Jacobin scumbag.

[dfwgator]

“I’m off!”

https://youtu.be/BYYfrkN01ZA?t=118