Théodore Géricault's colossal 'Raft of the Medusa' (1818–1819), measuring nearly 5 by 7 metres, depicts the aftermath of the 1816 wreck of the French frigate Méduse off the coast of Senegal: while the ship's officers took the lifeboats, 150 sailors and passengers were abandoned on a makeshift raft, where thirteen days of drift brought violence, madness, and cannibalism. The pyramidal composition of the dead and the dying, crowned by an African sailor waving a shred of cloth toward a speck on the horizon, launched French Romanticism as a political art form.

Exhibition Venue

Louvre Museum

Paris, France