The Raft of the Medusa

Painted when Géricault was just 27 years old, The Raft of the Medusa is considered an instant classic of the Romantic Movement.

In its brutality, realism, and raw emotion it captures the essence of a historic event that shocked the French public, a Revolution-weary public that was not easy to shock. The story behind the painting is as devastating as the desperation on canvas.

The Medusa was a French naval vessel that was on course off the coast of Africa before running aground on a sandbar near Mauritania on July 2, 1816. After three days of trying to free the ship from where it was stuck, the crew and passengers took to the ship's six small lifeboats.

The problem was that there were 400 people on board, while the boats only had the capacity to carry approximately 250. As a result, 146 men and one woman were loaded onto a wooden raft that was both shoddily and hastily constructed.

With only one bag of biscuits, two casks of water, and several casks of wine, the people adrift experienced a hellish 13 days at sea. There was a great deal of infighting, with many people being thrown overboard, throwing themselves overboard, or cannibalized.

By the time they were finally rescued, only 15 men had survived. This caused a huge scandal at home due to the slow response of the French government in the rescue.

The greatest inspiration for this painting was the true story of the tragedy. When news of what had happened reached France, the public was rightfully shocked and Géricault seized this opportunity to capitalize without commission on the event.

He foreshadowed the turn towards realism that would be seen in his own lifetime and the modern use of the media as a political tool. In addition, a multitude of prior artists' influences can be seen in The Raft of the Medusa.

Baroque lighting:
The tone and lighting utilized in The Raft of the Medusa are taken straight from the Caravaggio playbook. Intense chiaroscuro and use of tenebrism create a dramatic background against which the survivors stand out as a stark testament to humanity.

John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark:
Copley, an American painter, depicted the attack of a 14-year-old orphan named Brook Watson by a ravenous shark in Havana, Cuba. He lived to become friends with Copley. T

he influence on The Raft of the Medusa can be seen both in the subject matter, which treats a contemporary subject, but also in the idealization of the boy's form and the pyramidal composition.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment:
There is a clear influence of Michelangelo's Renaissance vision of Classicism in the idealized muscular forms of the bodies on board the ill-fated raft.

Géricault himself stated of Michelangelo's Last Judgment that "Michelangelo sent shivers up my spine, these lost souls destroying each other inevitably conjure up the tragic grandeur of the Sistine Chapel. "

Though in reality the survivors would have been sickly and emaciated, he painted them as vigorous, muscular youths.

A landmark work for a multitude of reasons, The Raft of the Medusa was not only one of the first paintings created without a commission, but was also one of the first paintings of the Romantic Movement.

Composition:
The action is arranged in two distinct pyramidal shapes. The diagonal lines lead the eye to two key peaks: the wave that may or may not engulf the survivors on the raft, and the flag in the top right corner that is raised in a last gesture of hope to the ship that may or may not rescue them.

At this point in their story it is uncertain what will happen to the survivors. The two pyramids serve to isolate the two distinct possibilities: rescue or massacre.

Color palette:
Géricault utilized a somber, dramatic color palette that was characteristic of Romantic painters. As the focus of the painting is the mass of corpses, flesh tones are present in abundance.

Warm shades such as ochre, burnt sienna, umber and deep brown were used in contrast to the deep blue of the stormy sea.

Lighting and tone:
The tone of the painting is as dark as the subject matter. Géricault draws from the Baroque with his lighting scheme, heavy on chiaroscuro and tenebrism, the stark contrast between light and dark.

The light of the sky contrasts sharply with the darkness of the sea and the overall tone of impending doom.

Figure studies:
For the amazingly life-like and eerie quality to the bodies, Géricault worked figure by figure, completing the sketching and painting of each body before moving on to the next one. He had closely studied cadavers in the local morgue, bringing home severed limbs and heads.

Géricault employed live models, mainly friends and assistants, to pose for him in the cadaverous poses. He painted directly from these live models instead of from preparatory sketches.

When he painted The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault was very deliberate in his message; this was not art for art's sake, nor some silly Rococo parlor trick - this was art for agitation purposes.

A political man who had even joined the French Musketeers out of his idealism, Géricault was not one to shy away from what he believed in. This was met with a mixed reaction from critics and the French public alike, and the painting even now in its violence and heartbreak cannot help but make modern audiences shudder in its powerful presence.

Contemporary reception:
First exhibited under the more generic title of Scene of Shipwreck at the Paris Salon in 1819, there was no confusion in the contemporary viewers' minds as to what the real subject matter was. The events of the Medusa were fresh in the Parisian collective consciousness.

Although classically idealized visually, the painting was fairly explicit in subject matter for the era. Particularly after the cold rationalism and clean lines of Neoclassicism, it was meant to shock. Critics took the bait, either responding to the work with lavish praise or infinite detriment.

One polarizing element was the inclusion of a black man holding the flag that could bring about their salvation. This was Géricault's personal statement on the abolitionist movement. Political digs like these were what kept the public talking.

London reception:
A highly sensitive man, Géricault was so exhausted after the initial showing of his masterpiece that he became a hermit. Eventually though, he would reemerge to try his statement on a new audience.

The piece was a great success in the Salons of London when Géricault took it on tour in 1822, after he had recovered from the mixed reviews in Paris. It reverberated with fellow Romantic artists such as J. M.W. Turner as well as the critics of the era.

Modern day reception:
This pivotal work of the Romantic era is still considered a masterpiece, now more than ever.

As one critic, Kenneth Clark states, The Raft of the Medusa "remains the chief example of Romantic pathos expressed through the nude; and that obsession with death, which drove Géricault to frequent mortuary chambers and places of public execution, gives truth to his figures of the dead and dying. Their outlines may be taken from the classics, but they have been seen again with a craving for violent experience. "

Indeed in a modern society that relishes images of realistic violence, the painting takes on a new validity.

While completely unique in that The Raft of the Medusa depicted a specific current event of the era, the wreck of the ship "Medusa" off the shore of Africa, shipwrecks have long been a common theme for painters. This is especially true after the wild success of Géricault.

Works by Gericault;

A Shipwreck, c. 1818

Head of a Drowned Man, c. 1819

Shipwrecks and stormy seas were to become one of the favored subjects of Romantic painters to follow;

Eugéne Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, 1822

J. M.W. Turner, A Disaster at Sea, 1835

Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899

Along with the rest of the French public, Géricault too was scandalized by this event and wished to immortalize it in an artistic statement. He chose the most dramatic moment, the point after 13 days adrift at sea when the few survivors spy a rescue mission at last and are infused with a shot of hope.

The raft is shown on the brink of sinking into the ocean, strewn with corpses and the near-dead.

To prepare for this composition, Géricault spent a fair amount of time in morgues studying corpses and degrees of composition, bringing severed limbs and even a severed head back to his studio to do in-depth studies of precise stiffness and gore.

The result is a disturbing and macabre testament to the power of human depravity and the ultimate triumph of hope.

The Raft of the Medusa was a polarizing political commentary that is generally considered to be the young Géricault's masterpiece, and is still one of the most talked about paintings in the world today.

The reason for this is clear in looking at the painting with its masterful composition and violent realism.

Frail, brooding and sensitive, Géricault was as romantic as a Romantic painter could be. While he began his career with grand military statements for the Emperor Napoleon, it was his later works, with their emotional brutality and raw empathy, which captured the hearts of audiences for generations.

Viewing works such as The Raft of the Medusa is a grueling experience even now in the stately confines of the Louvre. Unfortunately his death at an early age prevents us from knowing how much further into the depths of humanity Géricault was capable of plunging.

Géricault's masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa, was also his most controversial painting. It drew fire from French critics over the political implications and ambiguity of whether the men on the raft were to be rescued or not.

Critics thought it too gruesome, too realistic. In fact, Géricault had molded the figures from real life corpses. During the initial showing however, critics had very little to say about the actual artistic merit of the work itself.

Romanticism is sometimes viewed as a reaction to its more serious predecessor, the Neoclassical movement. As Neoclassical artists focused on properly accounting history through close attention to detail, Romantic artists flirted with themes of man's self glorification, man's part in nature, divinity found in nature, and emotion. They were part of a complex multimedia philosophical movement, involving the literary, visual, and intellectual arts.

Romanticism emphasizes the individual sense of self, creativity, imagination, and the value of art to make a statement. This emphasis on the individual is reflected in the ideas of self-realization through the act of contemplating nature.

There is the idea that the individual can only directly understand nature, free from society. Peace and salvation come through the individual rather than through political movements.

To read more about Gericault and his works please refer to the following recommended sources.

• Alhadeff, Albert. The Raft of the Medusa: Gericault, Art, and Race. Prestel, 2002
• Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina M. Theodore Gericault. Phaidon Press Ltd; Ill edition, 2010
• Eitner, Lorenz E. A. Gericault: His Life and Work. Orbis Publishing, 1983
• Eitner, Lorenz E. A. & Nash, Steven A. Gericault: 1791-1824. Fine Arts Museum of San, 1989
• Grunchec, Philippe. Gericault's Horses: Drawings and Watercolours. Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd. , 1984
• Grunchec, Philippe. Master Drawings by Gericault. Art Services Intl. , 1985
• Sagne, Jean. Géricault. Fayard, 1991
• Wheelock, Whitney. Gericault in Italy. Yale University Press, 1997