"THE RAFT OF MEDUSA " IN LOUVRE MUSEUM, PARIS.

                                       

                                          

The Raft of the Medusa..( On display in room no 700 ,Denon Wing ,Level 1 ,Loure Museum, Paris )

The painting stands as a view of human life abandoned to its fate . It  is  also directly linked with the colonisation of  Africa , the then  practice of Slave Trade in Europe   and corruption   .The painting presents a spine  chilling  scene wherein survivors of a  shipwreck  are shown struggling to save their lives on a hurriedly made raft.  A ship from the  French naval  frigate  named Meduse ( Medusa ) wrecked in the African coast  in 1816 . The ship was on a sail to Senegal, a French colony .The survivors told the story of a raft carrying 150 men to an odyssey that lasted 13 days and spared only 10 lives  after practicing cannibalism .

By staging black men among the shipwrecked group ,  Theodore Géricault ( artist ) was questioning codes of representation.The painting ( 16 feet by 23 feet )  is of monumental dimensions and despite its classic references, it overwhelms with the raw realism of its subject and its impetuous and looming style, far away from the academic canons. It depicts an actual piece of news from 1816, when the frigate "Medusa" was wrecked in the Atlantic on its way between France and Senegal.The pallid bodies are given cruel emphasis by the use of strong contrasts between light and dark; some writhe in the elation of hope, while others are unaware of the passing ship. It includes two figures in despair and solitude: one mourning his son, the other bewailing his own fate.Considered to be one of the greatest masterpieces of the nineteenth century, the painting  has always been viewed as a powerful argument for human rights.The Raft of the Medusa contains the gestures and grand scale of traditional history painting; however, it presents ordinary people, rather than heroes, reacting to the unfolding drama.

Géricault spent a long time preparing the composition of this painting, which he intended to exhibit at the Paris Salon of 1819. He began with extensive research and questioned the survivors, whom he sketched. He then worked with a model and wax figurines, studied severed cadavers in his studio apart from using his  friends as models to complete the work.

Théodore Géricault, the protagonist of European art in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Born in Rouen at the end of the 18th century, at the age of 25 he travelled to Italy to discover Caravaggio and Michelangelo, which pushed him to express emotions and passions with a new, almost brutal force, rejecting the balanced harmony of the academic style. His private life was also restless and unconventional.

This huge painting  was done in 1818 or 1819. Théodore Géricault, the protagonist of European art in the early decades of the nineteenth century.Unusual for his period, Géricault began to work on this huge painting without having been commissioned. The resulting composition was a history painting, but based on a recent event rather than a ‘prestigious’ historical subject. The figures in the scene are not mythological heroes or brave warriors, but victims of a shipwreck, forced to resort to cannibalism to survive.The survivors’ stories exposed the corruption of Louis XVIII’s government . The captain of the Medusa had obtained his position on the strength of his connections with power rather than his competence; in fact, he had not sailed at all in the past twenty years! Unable to prevent the ship from running aground, he left part of his crew to drift on a makeshift raft. The shipwreck created lot of resentment in France .

( Avtar Mota)

.
CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.