The Raft of the Medusa

The Raft of the Medusa, originally titled Scene of Shipwreck, is an oil painting of 1818 to 1819 by the French Romantic painter Theodore Gericault, completed when he was 27. At about 490 by 716 centimetres, the over-life-size canvas depicts the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the coast of present-day Mauritania in July 1816; at least 150 survivors were set adrift on a hastily built raft, and all but fifteen died over thirteen days of starvation, dehydration and cannibalism before rescue. Gericault chose the scandal, widely blamed on the incompetence of the French captain, as the subject of a large-scale uncommissioned work to launch his career, and the painting, now in the Louvre in Paris, became an icon of French Romanticism.