Theodore Geicute and The Raft of the Medusa (1819)
The Raft of the Medusa 1819
The Raft of Medusa is a large painting depicting the plight of the passengers on board the ship “The Medusa” who were stuck on a raft out at sea after the ship ran aground far from land. The people on board the raft ran out of food quickly and began having to resort to cannibalism and murder in order to stay alive. The ship, bound to Senegal to reinstate French rule, had both high and lower class citizens on it, and when the boat ran aground, all of the wealthier travelers used the life boats on the ship, abandoning the peasants on the raft to wallow and fight each other to survive.
Géricault was deeply moved by the story and went to painstaking lengths to get accurate details about the voyage, interviewing survivors and even making a scale model of the raft itself. What resulted was a gruesome painting that is impossible to ignore. One cannot help but pity those left behind on the raft as seen in the painting. Géricault was also trying to make a statement through his style in the piece. The humans are reminiscent of Greek and roman statues and the pyramid shape of the people is created to show an evolution of those hardest hit to those still alive with hope at the top. By highlighting the nobility of the passengers with the classical methods, Géricault ennobled the passengers who were more victims than aggressors. Also blamed in the story of the medusa is the incompetent captain, who was appointed by the king of France, leaving the lower class passengers like the king of France was leaving behind the lower classes of his people.
The nature of the painting and the event begs the question of who is to blame for the measures the passengers went to survive: they themselves, the incompetent captain, or the society that values the wealthy more. To look with our angle of monstrosity helps clarify the picture a little. We’ve dealt with many cannibals in our class so far, and the culpability of the cannibals boils down mostly to cultural difference, not unbridled savagery. So, the blame for cannibalistic actions of the passengers should be leveled elsewhere for their circumstance, most likely here at the captain which left them behind. He would have the blame for their actions because he inadvertently created the circumstance for their actions to be needed to survive. Géricault was one of the first painters to tackle such a large theme of monstrosity and humanize its perpetrators, considering them victims in a mature way that resonate with me and my knowledge from this class. While there may be a greater conversation about society in The Raft of the Medusa, it's clear that Géricault was commenting on the royalty, but broader societal commentary was not too far away.