The Raft of the Medusa

The Raft of the Medusa (French: Le Radeau de la Méduse) is a painting by the French artist Théodore Géricault, painted between 1818 and 1819, which represents a tragic episode in the history of the French colonial navy: the sinking of the Medusa frigate. Acquired on behalf of the State by Count Auguste de Forbin, Director General of the Louvre Museum, this 491 x 716 cm oil on canvas painting is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The Raft of the Medusa is one of the most admired works of French romanticism.

The Medusa frigate was in charge of transporting administrative equipment, civil servants and soldiers assigned to what would become the colony of Senegal. It ran aground on July 2, 1816, on a sandbank. At least 147 people remain on the surface of the water on a makeshift raft and only fifteen embark on July 17 on board L'Argus, a boat that came to rescue them. Five people died shortly after their arrival in Saint-Louis, Senegal, after suffering from hunger, dehydration, madness and even anthropophagy (the practice of consuming human flesh, a form of cannibalism). The event became an international scandal, partly because a French captain serving the recently restored monarchy was held responsible for the disaster because of his incompetence.

The Raft of the Medusa depicts the moment when, after thirteen days spent drifting on the raft, the fifteen survivors see a boat approaching in the distance, even though the condition of the makeshift boat is near ruin.

The makeshift raft seems to be on the verge of sinking, sailing on a raging sea, while the shipwrecked are represented as totally destroyed and helpless. An old man holds his son's remains on his legs; another cries in rage, shot down; a corpse without legs on the left evokes the anthropophagous practices that took place on the raft while scattered sand red spots recall the clashes.

The men in the middle of the boat had just seen a boat in the distance; one of them pointed to it, while an African member of the crew stood on an empty barrel and waved his shirt in the air to attract the ship's attention.

The pictorial composition is essentially based on three pyramidal structures. The first is formed by the mast and the ropes that hold it. The first structure includes the second on the left of the table, formed by dead or desperate men. The third shows, at its base, corpses and dying people, from whom the survivors emerge. At its top culminates the hope of rescue with the figure of the man waving his shirt.

The monumentality of the format means that the characters in the background are on a human scale, and that those in the foreground are even twice as large as a man: close to the plane of the work, piled up, the characters create an immersion effect of the spectator in the action of the painting.

The painting would be a work hostile to the Restoration and emigrants, but also a denunciation of slavery. That is why Géricault painted three figures of black men, whereas there was only one among the survivors. The artist takes a stand against the slave trade, which is still practiced despite its supposed prohibition.

Because of its desire to represent reality with what it has of repulsive, Le Raft de la Méduse is a striking figure of the emerging romantic movement in French painting, and lays the foundations for an aesthetic revolution, in reaction to the neoclassical style that then dominated (represented by artists like Jacques Louis-David).

The structure of the composition, in its pyramidal form, and the way in which the characters are represented (muscular and powerful and not emaciated) are linked to the classical current; but the realistic nature of the subject embodies a major evolution and marks the rupture between the neoclassical current and the emerging romantic current: in particular through the use of a cold and dark palette accentuating the tragedy of the scene.

Presented at the 1819 Salon, the work is undoubtedly the centrepiece of the Salon, so much so that the Jounarl de Paris writes "that it strikes and attracts all eyes". Louis XVIII, after visiting the show three days before its official opening, declared: "Sir, you have just wrecked a ship that is not one for you".

Criticism is divided: the horror and terrifying nature of the subject exert a certain fascination on the public, but the supporters of classicism express their disgust for what they consider to be nothing more than a "pile of corpses". They consider that its raw realism differs greatly from the "ideal beauty".

Géricault's work raises a frequent paradox in art, namely that of transforming an repulsive subject into a painting full of strength, and reconciling art and reality.

Collection: Department of Paintings of the Louvre