Below is Gustav Klimt’s Jurisprudence, a fragment of which I’m thinking of using as the cover for By Violence Unavenged. It’s in public domain, which is fortunate for publishing purposes. Being in black and white (no coloured picture of the painting exists), I will have to incorporate colour another way: a little gold (you can’t have Klimt without gold), and gold and black are the colours of the Habsburgs (more on that later); a little red for blood (murder and vengeance) and Nazism (also murder and vengeance); and purple, the colour of justice.
Klimt painted Jurisprudence, along with Medicine, and Philosophy, between 1900 and 1907, as part of the ceiling decoration for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. The ‘Faculty Paintings’ as they became known, were so controversial that they were never displayed at the University. After a court case released the paintings from state ownership, and returned them to the artist, they eventually became part of the private collections of Vienna’s wealthiest Jewish families, notably August Lederer, one of Klimt’s major patrons. Following the Anschluss in 1938, the paintings were seized by the Nazis, hidden, and eventually destroyed in 1945. Only photographs and preliminary sketches remain.
To quote Wikipedia (because, after a few hours of novel writing, I’m feeling lazy):
A condemned man is depicted surrounded by three female furies and a sea monster, while in the background, the three goddesses of Truth, Justice, and Law look on. They are shown as the Eumenides, punishing the condemned man with an octopus‘s deadly embrace.
Why this painting?
Well, no artist encapsulates the opulence, confidence, decadence, and inner turmoil of Vienna better than Gustav Klimt. For a novel set largely in Vienna in the days before and after the Anschluss, how could you not have a Klimt painting on the cover? Just don’t make it The Kiss or Woman in Gold. Klimt’s painting was later considered ‘Degenerate Art’ by the Nazis, and is appropriate in this way, too.
As far as the novel’s characters are concerned, Roderick Raye’s quartet in Vienna was named the Klimt Quartet by way of homage to the artist. Klimt was known to Roderick through the network of Vienna salons and, more significantly, to Ailine Devereaux, his cellist.
Regarding theme, In the Hearts of Kings is a trilogy about Justice. By Violence Unavenged explores the nature of justice, its relationship with truth, law, authority, the individual, and social responsibility. It is fitting, then, that this first volume should have Jurisprudence as its cover.
As for the moody, brooding fury, the goddess of vengeance who stares from out the painting, she so aptly represents the narrator and protagonist: the adult Phoebe Raye. I think she will feature on the spine as well as the front cover, confronting potential readers with the challenge: ‘Read me, if you dare!’
In By Violence Unavenged, patterns, symbols, colour, and intricate details combine to form a complex and conflicted work. It is written in a minor key. But more on music and writing later.
