The Raft of the Medusa

Two great diagonals structure the canvas. One rises from the corpses in the lower left to the waving figure at the top right; the other runs up the mast and the straining sail, pulling in the opposite direction, so that the raft is caught between rescue and the next wave. The palette is bituminous, all ochres, greens and greys, and the darks have sunk further over two centuries. Géricault studied severed limbs and cadavers in the Beaujon hospital, shaved his head to avoid distraction, and built a scale model of the raft. The figures are heroic, muscular nudes even as they die, a deliberate collision of Michelangelo with modern journalism.

Shown at the Salon of 1819 under the neutral title Scene of a Shipwreck, it was read at once as an indictment of the restored Bourbon monarchy. Critics were divided, the state declined to buy it, and Géricault took it to London where paying crowds queued. The Louvre acquired it at the sale after his death in 1824. The figure lying face down with an outstretched arm in the foreground was posed by the young Eugène Delacroix.

Did You Know? Two actual survivors of the wreck, the carpenter Lavillette and the surgeon Savigny, helped Géricault reconstruct the raft and sat for him in the studio.