The Horrifying History Behind "The Raft of Medusa"

However, due to the incompetence and irresponsibility of the captain, Hugues Duroys de Chaumareys, the Medusa drifted away from its travel companions and, ignoring all signs of warning from the other ships, it sailed until it ran aground upon the Arguin bank. The banks were a well-known and dangerous area off the coast of Mauritania, which the captain had known about and been informed that the ship should avoid.

After many attempts to dislodge the frigate, being far from land and completely isolated, it was decided that the only chance for survival was to abandon the ship and try to reach the shore with the lifeboats– of which there weren’t enough for all passengers. As such, the ship was partially dismantled and from the recovered material, a raft was built and 152 people were placed, most of whom were civilian passengers. 

Meanwhile, the lifeboats ended up accommodating only high-ranking officers, the captain, the governor, his family, and others loyal to them. Even with these individuals aboard, there was still room for others.

The intention of the marooned group was to tow the raft by some of the lifeboats, but it was not long before those heartless people intentionally let go of the ropes, condemning the 152 passengers to a slow and horrible death. Crammed onto that overcrowded and precarious structure, the passengers possessed only two small barrels of water, six barrels of wine, and 25 pounds of salty, water-drenched food. 

In addition to that, due to their combined weight, the structure was constantly semi-submerged, even when it wasn’t being tossed about by storms and waves. Without food or water, and cast into the deepest darkness of the night, or under the burning sun, many of those aboard the raft quickly lost their minds. Some turned to violence, killing others by swords, knives, or their bare hands, while others committed suicide, diving into the sea, telling others not to worry, because they were going to find help.

When the hunger and thirst were too strong to bear, human flesh from the dead corpses of their companions and their own urine became their last, desperate chance of survival. 

Thirteen days after the shipwreck, only fifteen survivors, in wretched condition and barely alive, were found by the Argus, which had been sent to rescue the passengers of the lifeboats. Six days prior, however, the occupants of the raft had drowned everyone who was either too sick or too wounded to continue, in order to save resources for the rest. 

Despite the providential appearance of the Argus, five men from the raft didn’t survive. Only two of the five lifeboats reached Saint-Louis, while the other three landed far from the town, leaving the passengers to march across the desert, all the while being antagonized and robbed by locals.

In the end, the tragedy of the Medusa was publicized by two survivors of the raft, A. Corréard, an engineer and geographer who volunteered to board the raft so as to not abandon his men, and H. Savigny, a surgeon. After a long recovery in Saint-Luis, the survivors reached France where they relayed their tale to journalists, airing the full sordid details of the catastrophic journey. 

They even composed personal memoirs of their harrowing experiences. Their accounts included a full defamation of the Captain and the French governor of the colony, Julien-Désiré Schmaltz, who was also aboard the Medusa with his family. Neither man showed any mercy for the shipwrecked souls, the latter even demanding to be lowered on his armchair onto one of the lifeboats.

Thanks to their testimony, de Chaumareys and Schmaltz were tried and condemned for their actions. After seeing the impact the story had on the public, the outrage, anger, and horror that swirled among the French citizenry, Géricault thought that the deplorable tragedy could become the key to his success.

He soon met and interviewed Corréard and Savigny, as well as a carpenter who also survived the Medusa tragedy, asking him to construct a model of the raft. As Géricault had an obsession for verisimilitude and realism, he spent two years methodically studying every single visual component of his painting.

His intention was to transfer onto the canvas the frightening, yet astonishing, force of nature and the horror and fear of those aboard the raft. He even took time to observe sea storms and the look of the waves during a tempest.

Accuracy of figures was key to his desires, so he composed many sketches of human bodies and body parts, for which he studied corpses and human remains at the morgue. In his pursuit of accurately portraying death, he even went so far as to borrow some of the human remains, having them delivered to his workshop.

Initially, Géricault didn’t know for sure which moment of the tragedy would have been better to represent, but in the end, he chose to paint the instant when the last survivors on the raft finally spotted the Argus. 

The canvas size he chose is imposing, at 5 x 7 meters, and it truly embodies the spirit of Romanticism, displaying a mixture of elements that highlight the tragedy, such as the dark and gloomy colors which recall Rubens or Velasquez, Caravaggesque lighting, and surprisingly realistic and distressing figures. This is all realized thanks to a period Géricault spent abroad in Italy, between 1816 and 1817, where he studied Caravaggio’s and Michelangelo’s masterpieces.

The final painting depicts an entangled mass of bodies and limbs stretched towards salvation, a grotesque mountain of dying figures surrounded by the silent desolation of half-stripped corpses, strewn across precariously semi-submerged structures. The entire piece is saturated in the sense of resignation and suffering.

A shred of hope culminates in one man desperately waving a piece of cloth in order to draw the attention of the Argus, while in the foreground, the corpses of those already lost are being taken away by the sea, and the other raft occupants appear lost in their agony. All around these wretched figures, the wind swells the tall, makeshift sail and the storm and its waves continue to siege the raft and its cargo of despair.

When Géricault finally finished the piece, it was shown in Paris in 1819. Immediately, people and critics were divided in their opinions. Many who viewed the painting were fascinated by the realism of the tragedy and the unusual beauty of what the horror produced. Many also admired what it could represent about contemporary French society, the struggles after Napoleon’s fall, and how the people were constantly at the mercy of the powerful and their whims. 

Others more used to or partial to neoclassicism, however, were simply horrified and scandalized by the unexpected nature of the painting, unable to completely understand its meaning or why the artist chose to depict such disgusting details and open suffering.

Yet, regardless of the reception and the split opinions, the painting, a true masterpiece, was soon on everyone’s lips, and Géricault had his fame.