Deer in flower garden

Find the head first. It sits near the top, dark blue, thrown back over the body the way a deer checks behind it when it senses danger. The Kunsthalle Bremen, which owns the painting, describes the animal as hunted. Its body melts into the splintered planes of the garden, soft curves answering the round blossoms and leaves, and from the side a sharp red wedge drives into it. The red and orange patches around that point are easy to read as wounds, and the museum places the deer in an old line of Christian images, the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God offered as a sacrifice. Marc painted it in 1913 and signed it with a single M at the lower right. Bremen bought it in 1950 with money from the city, while the museum was still repairing the damage from a firebomb that had struck its building in 1942.