With love, A murder
September, how I’ve waited for you.
It’s such an inspiring and beautiful season and time of year with the leaves changing colour and descending from the trees, indicating a starting point to create your new life and an updated version of you. Out with the old and in with the new with the start of spooky season for some (me) and a time to make space for the things you wished for.
There’s a certain seriousness in the air that sobers you up and also quite unseriousness with September being the second month with most births and birthdays. Some people do take the concept of creating a new life for oneself so damn literally.
Sooooo, I thought, why not celebrate it with a murder mystery? Perfect!
Murder in the house (1890) by Czech artist Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924)
There’s a young woman lying on the ground.
Her body is lifeless, contorted and twisted with blood coming out of her mouth and/or head.
One can almost hear, or at least envision, everything being said by the ten people standing by and observing her corpse. All the questions, remarks, random murmuring and gasps. Some bystanders give off a sense of normalcy when viewing the young woman, while others have a concerned and shocked look to them. Yet one thing they all share is the human emotion of curiosity.
And naturally, I have questions.
There’s blood by her feet and on the wall, but none on her hands.
A broken window, but no shards of glass on the ground.
The blood hasn’t reached the storm water well, so she couldn’t have been there for long.
Is one of the bystanders the killer? If so, who?
70% of the people there have their hands shown except for the two in the far back and the one leaning towards the wall covered in a big blanket with their hands covered. Or maybe they’re just cold.
Was she pushed from a higher up floor? Based on the placement of her body, it’s a possibility. But then, where is the splatter?
Maybe she was killed somewhere else and then placed there and made to look like she fell from a floor higher up. The blood on the wall makes me think that she was carried to where she is currently lying and, as I said before, made to look like an accident. Because the blood isn’t located on a door, but the wall of an entrance to an alley way in the building.
Or was it not a murder at all, but an actual accident? Is that why there’s a hole in the window because somebody accidentally threw something through the window that hit her in the head that led to her death? Filled with instant fear and guilt, the person who did this then decided to move the body for a reason they only knew. Fear isn’t really known to make people think in rational ways. But then again, there would be shards of glass on the ground between her and the window.
Schikaneder painted this and set the scene in a real courtyard in a former Jewish Town and ghetto located in Prague in Czech Republic near Špitálska Lane and Rabínská Street, an area he knew well, that was riddled with violence, poverty and death so I guess that this, unfortunately, wasn’t something abnormal or unfamiliar for him to witness or hear of.
We are given the aftermath, but not the explanation. Maybe this is painted from a real-life experience. Who knows?
Other artworks that I’ve written about: Lover of art
Squeeze a nipple
Portrait of a black woman
The Swing
The art of painting
Christ in the storm
