The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault

The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault refers to a serious and frightening scandal that took place in the post-Napoleonic period, when the monarchy was temporarily restored in France. In June 1816, the frigate Medusa sailed with three other ships of the French Royal Navy towards the port of Saint Louis in the colony of Senegal. The colony had been given to the French by the British as a gesture of goodwill to the restored French King Louis XVIII. The ship was carrying about 18 passengers, including the new governor of Senegal and his soldiers, including 400 crew members. The 160-year-old captain, who had not been to sea for 53 years and had never commanded a ship, earned his position by virtue of his social status as a nobleman and his connections to the Bourbon monarchy.

Wanting to cover the distance in a reasonable time, the failed captain clung to the shoreline and quickly overtook the other ships, but unexpectedly ran aground. The sailors tried to throw excess weight from the deck, hoping to lift the ship off the muddy ground and float with the tide, but the captain, who feared his employers in France, refused to get rid of the heavy guns, and in the end, everyone was forced to abandon the sinking ship. The captain, who kept the six lifeboats for himself for the senior commanding officers and their families, lowered about 149 French passengers and junior crew members (including one woman) onto a makeshift wooden raft that was tied to one of the boats.

The original intention was probably to tow the raft, but the hopeless plan was quickly abandoned and the remaining raft rope abandoned the raft's passengers to the open sea. And so, without food and water, the raft tossed for 13 days, during which the starving experienced violence, murder, loss of sanity, and eventually even resorted to cannibalism. Only fifteen men who survived the terrible ordeal spotted the ship “Argos” on the horizon, which was searching for the remains of the suitcase, hoping to salvage some of the gold bars it was carrying. They signaled to it with all their remaining strength, but the ship did not notice them and continued on its way.
The painting depicts the same moment as described by one of the survivors – the moment when the survivors’ composure turned to panic and despair. Fortunately, the ship Argus miraculously returned after two hours, rescuing the survivors.

On the other hand, the captain and the commanding staff all managed to reach the coast of Africa and from there returned to France, where they were arrested on charges of dereliction of duty and put on trial between 1816 and 1817. (They were later acquitted.) The trial of the captain and his crew, which was held in parallel with the shocking descriptions that appeared in a pamphlet published by two of the survivors: engineer Alexandre Courier and surgeon Henri Savigny, became a major news event and a scandal on an international scale.

Théodore Géricault and the Creation of the Raft

At the same time, Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault, a young and ambitious 25-year-old painter, was looking for a dramatic, compelling and serious enough subject to launch his career with one bold brushstroke, as the painting “The Oath of the Horatii Brothers” had done for his fellow painter David (Jacques-Louis David). And within the recent trend of dealing with political issues set by David, Géricault chose as his subject the difficult experience of his citizens France Abandoned by the Captain. For Gericault, the story revealed the darkest nature of man, and gave expression to the social situation that still prevailed in France.

As the son of a wealthy middle-class bourgeois family, Géricault was disappointed by the results French Revolution, and could not bear the unqualified hegemony and privileges still held by the nobility. In this delicate tension between the rights of the old world and the modern world, Géricault found himself. On the one hand, Géricault's wealth allowed him the financial freedom to develop his artistic pursuits, and to realize his sporting passions in horse riding without hindrance. On the other hand, in the year preceding his work on the painting, Géricault became acquainted with the pro-Bonaparte bourgeois community in the neighborhood of Montmartre, where he lived in Paris. The friendship that Géricault developed with Courier and Savigny, and the influence of the pamphlet they published, marked the beginning of Géricault's journey in search of the true meaning of the shipwreck, and in finding a covert way to express his moral and political protest. The power of the raft as a tool of political propaganda was not necessarily the most important theme for Géricault, but it certainly stood out in the general atmosphere that prevailed in France.

France is divided – Napoleon's supporters against the Restoration of the House of Bourbon

France at the time was still deeply divided, between liberal and royalist factions, and the trial became an arena for a struggle between the divided parties over the restoration of the monarchy. The fact that the royal official saved himself and other aristocrats, while abandoning 150 commoners to certain death, was a parable and a witticism of the privileges of the nobility, and served as a cushion for the accusations of the republican factions, who painted a similar picture of the helplessness of the corrupt Bourbon monarchical government, which was cruelly abandoning the French people. Here, the republican critics used the well-known nautical political metaphor (from Plato's Republic) of the "good leader" wisely steering the "ship of state." For Napoleon's veteran soldiers, who were dismissed from their posts in favor of courtiers (like the captain), the Medusa disaster summed up the state of France, under the Bourbon dynasty, as a parable of the oppression of the nobility and its poor talent.

Censorship and political controversy

The Salon of Louis XVIII in 1819 was intended to be an expression of the greatness of the Bourbon dynasty through the exhibition it gave as a patron of the arts. In contrast to the classical themes of David's French school that preceded it, The Louvre The Renaissance was filled with images representing piety and religion, medieval-style depictions that were consistent with the idea of ​​the church and monarchy in the grace of God. Most artists, who could not afford the cost of the huge canvases, had to rely on patrons, who were usually identified with the royal house. As a member of a well-established bourgeois family, Géricault could bear the financial burden, and managed to escape this type of censorship.

After dozens of preparatory drawings, Géricault decides on the appropriate moment for the subject of the painting, the moment when the survivors try to attract the attention of the distant ship, but to no avail. On a huge canvas measuring almost 7 by 5 meters, Géricault presents in the Great Salon of the Louvre the work that is clearly identified with the controversial subject, at a time of political upheaval. Not surprisingly, and to avoid a political scandal, the title of the painting was changed in the exhibition to “Scene of a Shipwreck” (Scéne de Naufrage) and the direct reference to the political event of the Medusa disaster was removed. And yet, it was the lone large painting in the salon that constituted a complete contrast to David’s heroic pictures, and expressed a very personal opinion, at a time when “to speak of the Medusa was to embarrass the royal house.”

Classical style and modernism – the French romantic style

Gericault takes his first steps in the same style of the French school, at a time when Napoleon's patronage provided both the material basis and the victories that served as a subject for many artists.
But with the fall of Napoleon, both patronage and subjects disappeared. Then the aspiring artist traveled to Rome to see and imitate the classical artists firsthand. Impressed by their great skill in depicting figures, Géricault longed for an alternative that would break the “boringness” of paintings of antiquity, religion, or monarchy. Géricault found this alternative in the harsh realities of modernization. Géricault wanted to maintain the classical anatomical precision of Michelangelo and his ilk, as well as the universal appeal of a subject that would speak to the general public. The problem he faced was how to give classical form to everyday reality, in other words, how to “translate a fresh contemporary event, like the morning news, into a painting on a superhuman scale.” Or how to choose between modern and monumental.

But instead of choosing one and abandoning the other, Géricault combined them into “a completely new form of modern history painting,” a style that eventually came to be known as Romanticism. French, which led to the historical importance of the Raft he created. Géricault's unique style, especially as seen in the Raft, was linked to his ability to combine the monumentality of the classical style with modern nationalism and heroism, while at the same time realistically depicting the anti-heroic nature of life. The paintings were of and addressed to people, and the massive size of the painting was in keeping with traditional history paintings and suited the Louvre.

Analysis of the work

Géricault’s extreme use of perspective in creating the unconventional composition benefited both the viewer and the lower-class figures depicted in the painting. By bringing the raft close to the foreground, Géricault made the viewer involved. The viewer’s eyes follow the survivors straining towards the point on the horizon – the Argus, and he does not know whether the Argus is approaching or disappearing. Géricault uses a hierarchical pyramidal composition – the 15 survivors are arranged as a human pyramid parallel to the threatening wave rising on the left. The different human states are depicted gradually: from the dying and desperate bodies at the front of the composition to the peak of hope in the figure of the black man waving to the ship on the horizon. The black figure – representing the lowest class and standing at the top of the pyramid.

The composition is based on diagonal lines created by the movement of the people, the sail, and the outline of the raft. The diagonals cut the surface and convey a sense of instability, emphasizing the contrast between the horror and despair and hope of the figures. The abundance of diagonals also emphasizes a dynamic movement full of emotion, as the figures turn in different directions, and the raft moves across the stormy sea. The people on the raft are divided into four groups: the dead and dying are in the center, those who are struggling to rise, and the third group consists of three figures huddled together by the mast with body gestures, while the fourth group crowns the figure of the African waving the flag. If we look at the painting from left to right, we will notice that the physical movements of the figures are invigorating. The figures in the foreground are tormented and emphasize considerable despair, while the faces of the more active figures are slightly blurred, hidden in shadow, and some are not even visible at all.

Gericault, like his Romantic colleagues and neoclassical predecessors, was greatly influenced by the way the figures were depicted in Michelangelo's and Baroque paintings. The figures are depicted with great anatomical precision, and in an ideal muscular design of shaved figures without any mention of injuries or blood, as they were in reality. At the same time, the figures' poses are twisted and distorted in various states of exhaustion, in gloomy colors and with sharp contrasts of light and shadow that will provide the necessary atmosphere of drama. The figures depicted at the bottom of the step emphasize the nothingness of man in the face of the forces of nature and are contrary to the neoclassical perception that emphasized restraint and heroism. The vulnerable man is a victim and not a hero. The atmosphere in the work is full of pain, suffering and despair, and the extreme descriptions of death and despair are revealed in their full ugliness, and without embellishment or idealization.

The sky and the ocean, romantic in their style, convey immense drama, and create a sense of the powerful forces at whose mercy humans are at their mercy, and on which alone Géricault worked for a whole year. Géricault’s precise use of anatomy to depict the grotesque figures had another purpose: to place the viewer in the position of the survivors and share an emotional and empathetic connection with their efforts. It is also worth noting that there are twenty figures in the picture, not fifteen. Death lurks in every corner of the painting. The horror stems not from scenes depicting rebellion, cannibalism, or chaos, but from the knowledge that the consequences of the shocking and bloody event are being depicted. An event that will forever mar the lives of the survivors by the scars left by the memory of the shocking abominations that took place. The viewer is given clues to this from the blood-stained axe head on the right side of the painting, the headless corpse of the figure in the foreground on the right, the upper torso of the man on the upper left side of the painting, his rotting and swollen hand, and the gaping wound under his ribs, as well as the absence of his lower torso. All of these provide chilling hints of the original carnage.

However, death also resides among the living, like the black man on the right side of the painting, whose mouth is pressed against the buttocks of the young redheaded figure, and the figure of the dejected father, who sits and holds the body of his dead son.
Early sketches of the painting (top two images below) reveal the development of the father figure, originally depicted by Géricault as an animalistic cannibal who later became a father grieving for his son (bottom image below). The father's face may express not only sorrow, but also regret.
The blood-stained bandage on his left arm hints at the state in which his bestial instincts have taken over him, increasing the disgust for the one who ate his flesh and whose blood comes out of his loins (as if eating his own body – as the bandage suggests).

The Raft of the Medusa allowed Géricault to paint modern life as a fascinating mixture of cruelty and heroic struggle, despair and hope, destruction and redemption. Géricault managed to give the painting a broader meaning than just a social and political issue. The universal landscape painting emphasized the human struggle against nature. Here the Romantic style focused on the tragic suffering of humans, the shipwreck of the entire civilization, which had reached a savage cannibalistic situation. A new and authentic Romantic situation that revealed the darkest nature of man, and despised the ideas of the Enlightenment and Rousseau about the noble savage man, and of nature as the true and just basis for morality.

Géricault and the Quest for Truth

Gericault, a prototype of the suffering and furious Romantic artist, expressed his disappointments and feelings about what was happening around him, in nature and society. His work was on the one hand full of drama and emotion, and on the other hand well-planned and deliberate. Gericault did not easily stray from his imagination, and always sought a new source of inspiration from life itself, so that he often exposed himself to a fresh experience that would sharpen the sense of the harsh reality of the subjects he painted. The political events coincided with a period of despair in his private life that drew him tirelessly towards the terrible and the macabre. In radiant solitude for a year and a half, and with an unceasing obsession, he studied the subject day and night and made numerous sketches. He visited the hospitals of Paris and the cold rooms, to examine and illustrate the expressions on the faces of the dying and dead, and traveled to the coasts of Normandy To observe the sea sky and study the movement of the water. In his exhaustive search for information about the shipwreck, he recruited the carpenter of the Medusa to create for him a miniature model of the raft on which he sculpted the figures of the survivors in wax and collected “a binder full of evidence and authentic documents.”

Gericault went so far as to attempt to recreate the same reality that the survivors experienced:
After shaving his head, he moved into seclusion in a new studio, and to examine the destructive effects of illness and despair on the human body, he brought corpses and body parts into the studio to experience the sights and smells of decaying human bodies, as did the survivors of the raft who preserved the parts of the dead for their own survival. Gericault also used real models, and to this end he asked his friend the painter Eugène Delacroix to serve as his model (the figure facing downwards with his arms spread out in the centre of the composition), and the two survivors – Henri Savigny and Alexandre Courier who appear at the foot of the mast. The multi-layered collection of information, which linked the event to the painting in hundreds of ways, paradoxically ended in a picture devoid of most references, which in fact created a more universal image of human loss.

The class struggle and the fight against racism

Gericault's painting linked the question of class to that of race, by including three black men among the survivors and by placing one black man above the rest of the raft survivors as a kind of beacon of hope.
During Géricault's time, the monarchy treated slaves as "dark-skinned mules" and the slave trade as a viable economic tool, and it was not without reason that Géricault placed a black man in his painting as a pinnacle of hope at the tip of the pyramid.
The horror stories of Courier, who reported on the flourishing slave trade in Senegal, carried out under the auspices of the French authorities, had a profound effect on Géricault, who was shocked by the revelation that slavery was an ulterior motive for the Medusa's voyage. Thus, Géricault not only expresses moral and political criticism of the act of abandonment but also speaks out against slavery, by depicting the survivors of a ship whose unofficial purpose was to re-establish the French slave trade on an island off Senegal.

Unfortunately, his next work, which was intended to be a monumental work on “The Treatment of Blacks,” was never completed due to the artist’s deteriorating condition due to tuberculosis and the deep depression he suffered from. Gericault’s painting style, which oscillated between states of depression and despair throughout his life, and pursued depictions of destruction and doom, as well as the tragic manner of his death at the age of 33 when he fell from a galloping horse, made him the prototype of the Romantic painter.