The Raft of the Medusa — Théodore Géricault
The Raft of the Medusa — Théodore Géricault
One of the largest and angriest paintings in the Louvre, and every figure on that raft was a real person.
The story
In 1816 the French frigate Méduse ran aground off the coast of Senegal because her captain had been given the command through politics rather than seamanship. The officers took the lifeboats. One hundred and forty-seven people were put onto a raft built from the ship's timbers and towed behind — until somebody cut the rope.
Thirteen days later, fifteen were still alive. What happened in between became a national scandal that nearly brought down a government.
Géricault was twenty-seven. He tracked down survivors and interviewed them. He had the raft's own carpenter build him a scale model. He borrowed limbs and heads from a hospital morgue and kept them in his studio until he could paint dead flesh from life. He shaved his head so he would be too embarrassed to go out, and finished it in eight months.
The figure waving the cloth at the horizon is reaching for a ship that had already passed them once.
What arrives
- Printed on canvas and set in a wooden frame — not a poster, not paper behind glass.
- Made to order after you buy it, then shipped worldwide.
- Théodore Géricault, 1818–19. Public domain — free to reproduce, which is the only reason a canvas like this can cost what it does.
- Reproduced from a full-resolution scan of the original painting.
Good to know
Screens are backlit and canvas is not. Colours read deeper and softer on the wall than they do here. Sizes are the framed dimensions. This painting is wider than it is tall, and the sizes below match its proportions almost exactly.
Buy any two prints, the third is half price. Applied automatically at checkout — no code needed.
Finish the wall
Four pictures worth owning for what happened in them. Each is sized to its own proportions, so pick the scale that suits your wall.
