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we're in the Louvre looking at Jericho's
raft of the Medusa this is a massive
painting it's sixteen by 23 feet and
it's important to remember that large
paintings were reserved for important
subjects subjects that were generally
ennobling or that showed heroic deed of
some sort and this painting could not be
further from that it's not drawn from
ancient Greek and Roman history it's not
a physical subject the story behind the
subject is one of the most gruesome in
the history of the sea that had taken
place just three years earlier the title
of the painting the raft of the Medusa
is referring to a ship called the Medusa
it was part of the small fleet of ships
that were trying to reclaim Senegal from
the British as a French colony and it
had about 400 people on board many of
them were settlers there were about 150
soldiers the man who was going to be the
new governor of Senegal was also on
board the problems began when the ship
ran aground in the open ocean there
weren't enough lifeboats and so the
captain ordered the ship's carpenter to
construct a raft from some of the lumber
of the boat to hold everybody that
couldn't fit into the lifeboat well
naturally those who went into the
lifeboats were those of higher status
the captain the officers the politicians
and those that ended up on this
makeshift raft were primarily the
soldiers and the settlers the idea was
that the raft
would be towed but within only a few
minutes when the captain realized that
the lifeboat was being slowed by the
raft the line was severed and the raft
was allowed to drift out to sea on
so so a hundred and fifty people were
abandoned at sea what happened on the
raft was horrific
there was starvation murder and of
course the worst thing imaginable that
happened was cannibalism and there were
even reports that some people were
intentionally killed to provide food for
the survivors and to preserve the small
amount of supplies that remained and all
of this is depicted in wrenching detail
the artist interviewed survivors he made
a full scale model in his studio he
created small stages with clay figures
in order to organize the figures and he
even retrieved body parts from the
morgue brought them back to his studio
in order to be able to accurately depict
putrifying remains you mentioned its
naturalism its realism but in some ways
it's not at all real the bodies are
clearly based on ancient Greek and Roman
sculptures on the studies of the nude
figure that artists had to do at the
academy this crescendo of this pyramid
of figures clearly things were not
organized in this way on the raft this
is a composition by an artist making a
statement saying something creating a
kind of anti-heroic
painting that is still in the visual
language of the Academy the captain had
been appointed by the king now the
monarchy had been recently restored and
you had this revolution that began in
1789 that established a republic in
France that ended with the Napoleonic
Empire and the restoration of a monarchy
but the Kings representative the captain
of the ship failed when Jericho is
painting this canvas he's making a
political statement that is anti
menarche anti King this was an
incompetent captain who was appointed by
the king and completely failed those he
was entrusted to protect one of the most
powerful aspects of this canvas is the
composition the corner of the raft is at
the lower center point of the canvas and
it feels as if we
step onto it the raft is tipped into our
space that corner is foreshortened this
composition is designed to draw us in
and up the artist fits many many
sketches he did his research but in the
end made this decision specifically to
draw him to make this spectrum of
emotion from madness to despair at the
bottom left where we see father mourning
that beautiful body of his dead son to
the upper right where we see an
expression of hope the figure on the
right pushes off with his right hand and
lists his left hand up in a last effort
to be saved all of the figures at this
moment when they see the ship on the
horizon actually a moment that they will
not be rescued the rescue will take
place a couple of hours later so this is
actually a moment of false hope there's
a sense of rotting bodies bench of death
is present here to me if we think about
neoclassical paintings like diseases of
reishi I we have figures from classical
antiquity sacrificing their lives for a
surface they are hero here human life is
taken for no reason at all people are
dying because of incompetence because of
abandonment and this is not
neoclassicism Jericho is hoping to
establish a style that we call
Romanticism this is a style that is
concerned with human emotion it is
characterized by fluid Rushworth
energized composition with an emphasis
on diagonal on movement you could think
back to artists like Reuben the
elevation of the cross the way that the
bodies are fused together in a single
motion romantic artists are looking back
to Reubens
they're not looking back as much to
ancient Greek and Roman art the way that
the neoclassical artists had done but
they're also concerned increasingly with
human
experience and with the power and
majesty of nature here expressed in a
wave on the left that threatens to crash
over the round the Enlightenment had
given people a sense that they could
control their environment that they
could craft a better future for human
beings create a republic of laws get rid
of the corruption of the monarchy and
yet here the corruption of a king has
had terrifying ramifications the
revolution had undone in many ways the
power of the church is no monarchy we
can have faith in anymore romanticism is
very much a style associated with this
period after the failure of the
revolution the failure of the ideals of
the Enlightenment and is it to
underscore that idea one contemporary
critic after seeing this painting said
we are all on the raft of the Medusa
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