The Raft of the Medusa: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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'''''The Raft of the Medusa''''' ({{lang-fr|Le Radeau de la Méduse}} {{IPA-fr|lə ʁado d(ə) la medyz|}}) – originally titled '''''Scène de Naufrage''''' (''Shipwreck Scene'') – is an [[oil painting]] of 1818–19 by the French [[Romantic movement|Romantic]] painter and [[lithography|lithographer]] [[Théodore Géricault]] (1791–1824).<ref>{{cite book | last = Barnes | first = Julian | date = 2011 | title = A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=FRoKuXZKEAUC&q=%22The+raft+of+the+medusa%22+%22Sc%C3%A8ne+de+Naufrage%22&pg=PT133 | location = New York | publisher = Vintage International Books | isbn = 9780307797865}}</ref> Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. At {{convert|491|by|716|cm|ftin|abbr=on}},<ref>Berger, Klaus. ''Géricault and His Work''. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1955. 78.</ref> it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval [[French frigate Méduse (1810)|frigate ''Méduse'']], which ran aground off the coast of today's [[Mauritania]] on 2 July 1816. On 5 July 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13&nbsp;days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]] (one [[custom of the sea]]). The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain.

Géricault chose this large-scale uncommissioned work to launch his career, using a subject that had already generated widespread public interest.<ref name="Louvre">"[https://archive.today/20121209133033/http://www.louvre.fr/llv/activite/detail_parcours.jsp?CURRENT_LLV_PARCOURS%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673226914&CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673327664&CURRENT_LLV_CHEMINEMENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673327664&bmLocale=en The Raft of the Medusa]". [[Louvre]]. Retrieved on 19 November 2008.</ref> The event fascinated him, and before he began work on the final painting, he undertook extensive research and produced many preparatory sketches. He interviewed two of the survivors and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. He visited hospitals and morgues where he could view, first-hand, the colour and texture of the flesh of the dying and dead. As he had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 [[Salon (Paris)|Paris Salon]], attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. However, it established his international reputation and today is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the [[Romanticism|Romantic movement]] in French painting.

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The young Géricault had painted copies of work by [[Pierre-Paul Prud'hon]] (1758–1823), whose "thunderously tragic pictures" include his masterpiece, ''Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime'', where oppressive darkness and the compositional base of a naked, sprawled corpse obviously influenced Géricault's painting.<ref name=gayford>Gayford, Martin. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20160505155053/https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-23003606.html Distinctive power]". ''[[The Spectator]]'', 1 November 1997.</ref>

The foreground figure of the older man may be a reference to [[Ugolino and Dante|Ugolino]] from [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s [[Divine Comedy|''Inferno'']]—a subject that Géricault had contemplated painting—and seems to borrow from a painting of Ugolini by [[Henry Fuseli]] (1741–1825) that Géricault may have known from prints. In Dante, Ugolino is guilty of [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]], which was one of the most sensational aspects of the days on the raft. Géricault seems to allude to this through the borrowing from Fuseli.<ref name="R73">Noon, 84. Riding (June 2003), 73. [[:File:Ugolino and his Sons Starving to Death in the Tower 1806 1a.jpg|Print after the Fuseli Ugolino]]</ref> An early study for ''The Raft of the Medusa'' in [[Watercolor painting|watercolour]], now in the Louvre, is much more explicit, depicting a figure gnawing on the arm of a headless corpse.<ref>''Scène de cannibalisme sur le radeau de la Méduse''. Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques, RF 53032, recto. [[Joconde]] # 50350513324</ref>

Several English and American paintings including ''[[The Death of Major Pierson]]'' by [[John Singleton Copley]] (1738–1815)—also painted within two years of the event—had established a precedent for a contemporary subject. Copley had also painted several large and heroic depictions of disasters at sea which Géricault may have known from prints: ''[[Watson and the Shark]]'' (1778), in which a black man is central to the action, and which, like ''The Raft of the Medusa'', concentrated on the actors of the drama rather than the seascape; ''[[The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782]]'' (1791), which was an influence on both the style and subject matter of Géricault's work; and ''[[:File:SceneofaShipwreck-Copley.png|Scene of a Shipwreck]]'' (1790s), which has a strikingly similar composition.<ref name="R77"/><ref name="Nicholson">Nicholson, Benedict. "The Raft of the Medusa from the Point of View of the Subject-Matter". ''Burlington Magazine'', XCVI, August 1954. 241–8</ref> A further important precedent for the political component was the works of [[Francisco Goya]], particularly his ''[[The Disasters of War]]'' series of 1810–12, and his 1814 masterpiece ''[[The Third of May 1808]]''. Goya also produced a painting of a disaster at sea, called simply ''Shipwreck'' (date unknown), but although the sentiment is similar, the composition and style have nothing in common with ''The Raft of the Medusa''. It is unlikely that Géricault had seen the picture.<ref name="Nicholson"/>