# Géricault's Disaster Piece: The Raft of the Medusa

An episode of [Stories of Art](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1877705944), 27 Apr 2026, 1 h 18 min.

Audio: https://episode.flightcast.com/01KQ73A9QDTFHX8HSG9A9KJNM4.mp3

How did the gruesome aftermath of a shipwreck inspire a masterpiece of Romantic art? And did Théodore Géricault really acquire body parts so he could capture the appearance of rotting flesh? Join Alastair and James as they tell the true story of a doomed ship and an extraordinary painting that laid bare the depths of humanity - The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault. If you want to see the artworks referenced in this podcast, remember you can switch to video wherever you are listening to your podcasts. Artworks in this episode include: Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, Louvre, Paris Horace Vernet, Portrait of Théodore Géricault, c.1823, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Théodore Géricault, An Officer of the Imperial Horse Guards Charging, 1812, Louvre, Paris To see images of the artworks in this episode go to heni.com/storiesofart or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac

## Transcript

[0:01] Hello and welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alastair Souk. And I'm James Fox.
[0:09] A fragile raft is lost on a choppy ocean. On board are the last survivors of a shipwreck. The makeshift vessel teems with gangrenous men, some standing, some collapsed, some already dead. They have been on the water, without food, virtually without drink, for 12 days. Most have already given up hope. But as the sun pierces a gloomy sky, they spot a ship on the horizon.
[0:39] Two men clamber atop an empty barrel, shout and scream at the top of their parched voices, and try desperately to flag down their rescuer. Will it spot them? Only time will tell.
[0:52] Now that, Alistair, is my description of Theodore Jericho's painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Very dramatic. Thank you very much. She completed it in 1819. So it's a vast monumental canvas, one of the most celebrated paintings of the 19th century. And it's the subject of this week's episode, the first of our episodes concentrating not on the life of an artist or a turning point in art history, but on a single work of art.
[1:18] And the Wrath of the Medusa is a barnstormer, isn't it? I mean, it is unbelievably powerful. I was quite lucky in that recently I was on a work trip in Paris and I went to the Louvre to have a look at it, knowing in part that we'd be talking about it imminently.
[1:37] It is engulfing. And the way it's hung, it's not very high above head height so that when you approach it, I mean, I don't think you gave the dimensions there, but it's 16 feet high, more than 23 feet across. And you see these poor, suffering survivors of a shipwreck and you feel like you're on the raft with them.
[1:58] And there's this force within it that seems to be, I think you were just talking about the people on top of the barrel who are hailing. Because one of the strange things is that most of these people have their backs to us. But your eye is drawn up to those people's signalling and you feel somehow you're in this elemental tussle with your fellow man and with nature. And it's such an important painting because...
[2:25] Well partly and this is the thing I find fascinating about it's this hinge moment where it's the beginnings of romanticism in art and this is the romantic masterpiece I think it's a wonderful choice as a masterpiece a single masterpiece for us to talk about Yeah and we talk about
[2:40] immersiveness now it's a much overused term to describe cultural experiences but it is a genuinely immersive painting it's a real barnstormer it's cinematic it's melodramatic it's horrific it's quite thrilling in some ways i mean the cinematic thing is very interesting james because when i was looking at it the other week it's really dark in places
[3:01] I mean, to some extent, we might come on to this, there are reasons for that, but the kind of drama of light and dark is one of the key artistic traits of this painting. Yeah, and it's a widescreen canvas. It is widescreen. It's the format of the movie screen. And perhaps most remarkably, The Raft of the Medusa is based on a true story. It's the story of a naval disaster, a shipwreck, a mutiny, of suicide, of murder, of even cannibalism.
[3:29] So listeners, viewers, wherever you are, whoever you are, brace yourselves. In this episode, we are going to be navigating some choppy waters. This is the story of Jericho's Raft of the Medusa. MUSIC
[3:50] I'd like to take you back to the summer of 1816, Alastair. OK. Although, actually, it's an oxymoron, because did you know there is no summer in 1816? What are you talking about? It's the year without a summer. I didn't know this. Yeah, and this is completely off-piste already. But in 1815, an enormous volcano had erupted in Indonesia, Mount Tambora, and this had created this dust cloud
[4:16] That had meant that there was no summer in Europe. This had caused terrible harvest failures, famines, and had enormous cultural consequences. Because did you know that a group of people, Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, had gone to Switzerland in the summer of 1816?
[4:33] Is this the Frankenstein moment? Yes. The weather was so bad that they stayed in their hotel and they wrote ghost stories. And that's when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. I see. So thanks to this volcanic eruption, we have another masterpiece of romantic art, in that case, literature. Exactly. So we should provide some context. Yeah.
[4:52] The nation of France at this stage has gone through nearly 30 years of constant upheaval. So this is, it's post-revolution. Yes. I mean, if you're a French adult in 1816, just think about what you have lived through. You've lived through a revolution in 1789, the execution of the royal family,
[5:12] the rise of a republic, the reign of terror, which killed tens of thousands of people. Then you witness the rise of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Empire. And then two decades of constant war in Europe. And so it's pretty extraordinary. And so when Napoleon is finally defeated at Waterloo in June 1815,
[5:34] It must have felt like this sort of era of perma crisis is finally over. And, of course, the empire is replaced by this very boring Bourbon monarchy. So this is the restoration of the French crown? The restoration of the French crown and a very boring king. Was he boring? Yeah, pretty boring. Well, compared to Napoleon, everyone's boring. That's true. A king called Louis XVIII. Okay.
[5:55] Now, we should say that France is an empire. And during the Napoleonic Wars, the British, of course, had a vastly superior navy, seized many of France's colonies. But in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent peace treaty, some of those colonies were returned by the British. Right. Right.
[6:17] They kept the good ones. They kept the ones they wanted. So they kept Mauritius. Why wouldn't you? They kept the Seychelles. They kept Tobago. They kept St. Lucia. But one of the colonies they returned was the West African country of Senegal.
[6:33] I see. And I think their reasoning was quite pragmatic in some ways. The British didn't want the French to be punished too severely because they felt France is punished too severely. It would become very aggressive and belligerent and would pose a threat to the stability of the continent, which is the last thing they wanted. And of course, that mistake is made 100 years later when arguably Germany, after the First World War,
[6:58] is punished too severely. Yes. And it leads to the rise of fascism and the Second World War. Is there a context here? And this is just hearing you speak. It's made me think of this.
[7:07] West African coast, the slave trade has been so essential in the 18th century for European powers, including Britain, of course. But Britain abolishes the slave trade in, I think, 1807. And is there a context there? They're happy to give up the colony or return it to Senegal because they're no longer interested in trafficking human enslaved people.
[7:32] Yes, I think that's a crucial part of it. Actually, slavery had been abolished during the French Revolution. It was reinstated under Napoleon. So it's still happening within France. And so Senegal is strategically important for the French for slavery, not strategically important to the British. Yeah.
[7:49] So they get the colony back. And so in the summer of 1816, the French form an expedition that is going to sail down to Africa and with great joy and great glory reclaim the colony of Senegal.
[8:06] And so this expedition consists of four ships. It's a convoy of four ships. There's a brig called the Argus. Important, the Argus. We need to remember the Argus. Remember the Argus, very important. It's going to play a very decisive role later on in this story. That's a British-built ship that has been captured by Napoleon a decade earlier. There's a small warship called the Echo.
[8:30] a supply ship called the Loire, and a frigate. Don't ask me what a frigate is, I don't know. But there's a frigate called the Medusa, la Meduse. And this is the flagship of the expedition. This is the flagship. And it has a rather controversial captain. Ah, yes. Do you know anything about Oog? Doire de Chamoray. Oog!
[8:51] Is that what we're calling him? I think his first name is Hug. Yeah, Hugues Droit de Chamouret. Look, what I know about this man is he seems to be the embodiment of, how to put it, aristocratic entitlement. Yes. Privilege. Yes.
[9:09] I'm not sure exactly how old he is at this point in 1816, but I do know that he hasn't had a naval career that has covered him in glory in the preceding, what, sort of 10, 20, 25 years. He was, he had a, when he was starting out, I think it was 1770s, late 1770s, he had a relative who was an important admiral, always helps. And he has this career for a few years in the French Navy
[9:39] which, as I understand it, was looking quite good, perfectly reasonable. But that comes to a juddering halt with, of course, the French Revolution. And he's the sort of aristocratic figure associated with the so-called Ancien Régime, the old regime, the old social order. And he becomes persona non grata within the Republic. And he flees. He's one of these refugees from the Revolution, an émigré.
[10:08] And then there's this curious moment where he seems to be involved in a royalist attempt to invade France, aided by the British, in which it's a disaster for those royalist forces. They get roundly beaten by Republican troops. But somehow, Ooc, our friend, he manages to escape France.
[10:32] being he's captured but he's not put to death yes he is imprisoned and then there's this bizarre sort of like picaresque series of escapades and adventures where he's in a tower in a town for two weeks he somehow escapes he gets on to the english fleet he ends up in england where he he's fated as a as a hero and he writes about his experiences i'm not sure how factually accurate i think there was
[10:57] some exaggeration going on. Some exaggeration, but as a result, perhaps, it's a bestseller. So he has this shadowy background, colourful background, and eventually he does return to France. He sits at much of the Napoleonic years back in his family's 18th century chateau. And I think the crucial thing, as I understand it, is that with the Restoration, the
[11:22] you suddenly have a lot of people like Houges-Douard de Chamouret who are saying, look, throughout these intervening years from the revolution until now, people like us, we've been loyal to the French crown and we're owed our recompense. And, okay, it doesn't matter that I've done nothing of real note for a very long time, but I think I should be leading an expedition, should be captain of the ship to, for example, Senegal. And
[11:50] Somehow, the Minister of the Navy agrees and appoints him to be the captain of the Medusa. Yes, he's completely inexperienced, really. He hasn't captained a ship for 25 years. It's because of his loyalty to the Crown that he gets this job. And when he gets the job...
[12:05] eyebrows are raised. His crew are thinking, this guy, there's no way he can do this. Well, the crew, of course, are not from the same social class that he's come from. And there's been, as you've outlined, this great rift within France, hasn't there? So that's being played out in the dynamics on the ship before even the expedition begins.
[12:21] Yeah, so it's not a good start. So the convoy is formed. The convoy consists of these four ships, and they contain everyone you could possibly need to get a colony up and running, including there's the governor, the future governor of Senegal and his family. But on the Medusa alone, there are about 400 people
[12:38] Right, it's big. It's big. And of those 400, you've got about 166 officers and crew. You've got about 170 soldiers. But you've also got, Alistair, explorers and engineers and naturalists and clerks and administrators and gardeners and teachers and bakers and surgeons and carpenters. And there are some wives along there, some young women with children. There's also, I read, there is a bust of our very boring king
[13:04] Presumably that's needed to show the people in Senegal who's boss, you know, when the colony is established. And intriguingly, I don't know if you're coming on to this, these three casks containing 90,000 francs in coin. Oh, I did not know that. And I don't think they have ever been discovered. So there is still a mystery to the Medusa where somehow that treasure has gone missing. Right. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah.
[13:30] Anyway, so essentially what you have on that ship and across those four ships is you've got a cross section of society because these people are going to settle Senegal. And so on the 17th of June, 1816, the convoy departs. It departs the town of Rochefort in the west of France. The voyage starts quite badly. Yeah, absolutely.
[13:52] There's some weather problems. There were always weather problems back in those days. But one of the first major setbacks, or minor setbacks perhaps, in this voyage, it comes six days into it. So it's now on the 23rd of June 1816, when a 15-year-old sailor slips on the deck and falls into the ocean. Just total accident. Accident. But it should have been a very straightforward rescue operation. He should have just been fished out of the sea. No problem. Move on.
[14:19] But the rescue operation is so disorganised, so bungled, that this 15-year-old boy dies unnecessarily. Well, as in they just lose sight of him? They lose sight of him. It takes too long to get their equipment together. Heavy seas. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even think the seas were that heavy. I think it was just poorly managed. And so we talked about those eyebrows being raised earlier. I think at this point, there are real mutterings among the crew that this is not being captained. This Medusa is not being captained properly.
[14:47] I think there are other problems with the convoy as a whole. The Medusa is much faster than the other ships. But rather than staying together and travelling in safety as a group, the Medusa just hurtles off into the distance and leaves the others behind. I mean, I think our dear friend, Ugg, Mr Chamaret, doesn't he later try and defend himself by saying he was told he had to get there quickly? Yes. And this is part of the reason. But it does all feel of a piece that he's...
[15:17] kind of not looking out for the people in his charge properly. Yes, I think the governor is on board the Medusa, and the governor is desperate to get to Senegal as quickly as possible. So the Medusa hurtles off without the other ships. Also, there are problems with the navigation as well. I mean, they don't really know where they're going. They get to Madeira and realise they're not actually in Madeira. They're, I think, 60 miles from Madeira. They sail off. Eventually, they get to Madeira. They travel down through to the Canary Islands.
[15:47] After the Canary Islands, they head down towards the west coast of Africa. You see, I've got some sympathy for them because this stretch of coastline was notoriously treacherous. This is the Bay of Argan. The Bay of Argan. And it hadn't been properly charted, right? So...
[16:06] You know, in this guy's defence, he hasn't really quite got the instruments, the tools, the maps and charts to be absolutely sure where he is. And he would know that within the quarter century before this expedition, there at least 30 ships had been wrecked on this bit of coastline. So I think everyone's probably quite anxious about...
[16:31] On the other hand, he had seemingly this quite cavalier, almost, could we call it Boris Johnsonian sort of sense of all will be well, swashbuckling adventure, you know, what ho. And that really doesn't help at this moment.
[16:48] Yeah, I think we should explain why this stretch of water is so dangerous. It's dangerous. This is a stretch of water, the Bay of Argonne, that's just off the coast of modern-day Mauritania. And there are sandbanks and sandbars and reefs that go right out into the ocean. So you don't see them. You don't see... You could be way away from the coast. You could be way away from the coast, but the ocean is very shallow. Right. And indeed, many ships had run aground in this area. Right.
[17:14] I think you are being perhaps too supportive of Duchamp-Marie at this point, because his crew certainly felt that he was getting too close to the coast. They were trying to talk him out of it. They tried to trick him at one point to say, oh, actually, we need to be way over there. But he didn't listen. They tried to trick him. The crew tried to trick him. They tried to pretend they were in a different location. Well, they had no confidence in him whatsoever. By this stage, all the confidence was gone.
[17:40] But he didn't listen. He was in a hurry. He was probably being persuaded by the governor to cut corners and to get to Senegal as quickly as possible. And, of course, let's remember, this is going to be a heroic moment for France to take back Senegal. So they are in a hurry. They want to achieve this amazing thing. But as they get to the 2nd of July, and they're now 100 miles off course,
[18:06] They notice when they look overboard, the sea has changed colour. Yes. The water starts to get warmer. These are all signs, apparently, that things are getting shallower. There's a bit of kelp suddenly around. There's some kelp. That's always worrying, isn't it? Yeah, if you see kelp, you're in serious trouble. And they take some soundings, 12 fathoms, 10 fathoms, 6 fathoms, and then with a jolt and a shudder, the Medusa crashes into a sandbank.
[18:34] So there must have been a moment where our friend, the dear captain, who's been saying, not a problem, not a problem, you know, on we go. He just suddenly must realise what the hell is happening and that it's unstoppable. And it's a major problem. I mean, presumably, you know, you would hope that you've got people on board...
[18:53] carpenters who might be able to patch up something like this and so initially they would be thinking well maybe we can get off this sandbar well they try for a few days a few days they try to to free the to free the ship to free the medusa but it doesn't work and so ultimately they decide as the as the vessel is creaking and beginning to crack against the power of the waves and
[19:17] And apparently the waves here, this is the Atlantic Ocean coming in, battering the ship, potentially. Yeah, and a very wavy part of the world, very windy part of the world. And they decide, well, you know, we're going to need to evacuate the vessel. Abandon ship. Abandon ship. They have to do it. But the problem is, as anyone who has ever watched Titanic will know...
[19:35] There are never enough lifeboats. There are never, ever enough lifeboats. So how many have we got here? I don't know how many lifeboats there are, but what they discover is that when they start to count up the people, they realise there are 150 more people than they have space in the lifeboats. So they've got enough lifeboats for all of the posh people, essentially. Always. The officer class are going to be fine. Yes. But they suddenly realise, ah, OK, what do we do with the rest of our passengers?
[20:01] Yes, so they instruct the ship's carpenter to build a raft. So this is the raft. This is the raft of the so-called raft of the Medusa. This is the raft. So this carpenter spends a couple of days building this very sizable raft. And the plan is...
[20:20] that they will get everyone onto the lifeboats and all the people who can't fit on the lifeboats will go onto the raft with the supplies and then the lifeboats will tow the raft to the shore and then they will gather up the supplies and then the whole crew will walk across the Sahara to Senegal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[20:35] I mean, I don't think that sounds that crazy until it's the walking across the Sahara to Senegal bit. But in some ways, yeah, right. I mean, it could be. And of course, you know, supposedly one of the threats at the time, as well as if you were shipwrecked and you made it sure you had to contend with the desert. But there are also the hostile moors who might come and potentially raid or worse.
[20:55] So, but yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that that's such an irrational plan on paper, given the situation. You know, if they could do that and tow this raft, it kind of could work. It makes sense. But of course, had there been discipline in the convoys, there would have been other ships around them that they could have got onto and sailed to Senegal. So it's partly the result of them just disappearing off and going off course and leaving the other ships behind. So anyway, Carpenter spends a few days building this very substantial raft.
[21:25] And on the morning of the 5th of July, so this is three days after they crash, they start boarding the lifeboats. And this is when all hell breaks loose. Yes. And as you have alluded to, Alistair, the lifeboats are not fairly apportioned. No. So the governor, his wife, his daughter and their friends get a lifeboat entirely to themselves. As they should. They have a second lifeboat. I don't know if we think about this. They have a second lifeboat just for their luggage. For their luggage.
[21:51] Is this true? This is unbelievable. So they get two lifeboats. I mean, it's quite amazing that they weren't somehow just attacked and thrown into the sea there and then. I mean, they'd been the precedent of the revolution not that long before. I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. But this is what happens. And the other crew and the more, I suppose, the elite, the more elite members of this, of the Medusa end up on lifeboats. But do you know how many people end up on the raft?
[22:15] Tell me. 147 people on this raft. We're not talking 10, 15 people. 147 people, including one woman, are crammed onto this raft with the supplies and various things. So do we have a sense of how big the raft is?
[22:31] I can't remember the figures now. Do you have the figures there? I read that it's about 20 metres long, almost 7 metres across. OK, so it's a big raft. But it also has this ridiculous feature, which, you know, I mean, why are they bothered with this? You come across this, the carpenter's installed a sort of railing around the edges of the raft that's 40 centimetres high. But of course, as soon as you get all these people coming onto the raft...
[22:58] The thing sinks. Yeah. So everyone's sort of partially submerged with the weight. And I think that then itself causes a lot of consternation and concern because they need provisions, but they start getting rid of the provisions to try and raise the raft. Yeah. And that's not that smart in the long term either. It's not a good start. So they get onto the raft.
[23:20] And at about 9am on the 5th of July, the lifeboats start to tow the raft towards the coast. But James, we haven't spoken about the sack of soggy biscuit. Okay, go ahead. Which I almost find this the most miserable detail of the entire saga of the raft of the Medusa.
[23:40] where at the very end before they set off, someone from the frigate, from the Medusa itself, chucks, well, chucks is not quite the right word, it's a very heavy sack full of ship's biscuit, which doesn't sound enormously appetising. But it ends up in the sea and then is pulled onto the raft and it's turned into this really sodden... Salty paste. Salty paste.
[24:05] which will be crucial for their survival. But, I mean, some of the horrors to come are genuinely... I mean, they're just so terrifying, terrible. But there's something about the depressing, salty, soggy pace that that's all they really have is substance apart from some wine and a little bit of water, which I find that really miserable. It's terrible. I think there are worse things to come, as you say. But so 9am, they head off.
[24:33] And after two hours, so we're still on the 5th of July, by 11am, they realise they're making no progress at all. That lifeboat, the raft, is so big, so heavy, so, as you say, half submerged, that these lifeboats can't really make any progress at all. And then, this is probably the most controversial thing.
[24:52] episode in the whole story. A decision is made, some people say it's an accident, but a decision is perhaps made to cut a tow rope and to leave the raft behind. I mean, if someone's hacking at the rope, that doesn't sound enormously accidental. Doesn't sound accidental, doesn't it?
[25:09] I mean, I think Chomere, I think, maybe said later that it was an accident and the rope had been severed by mistake. I don't believe that. I think probably the tow rope was cut and then the lifeboats hurtled off towards the shore and the raft was left on its own.
[25:25] And the raft has got, I mean, as you can see in Jericho's painting, they had created a sort of small mast and a sail, but they haven't got any maps. There's no rudder. There are no oars. So there's effectively, there is no way that they can actually navigate this thing. No, they have one compass. Did you notice they have one compass that in the chaos of that first day is dropped through a plank and falls to the ocean floor. I mean, another absolutely depressing moment for the people on board.
[25:52] Yeah, so these 147 people are stranded. Yeah. They're stranded and they have no prospect of being able ever to make it to the shore. And they're quite a volatile bunch of people. You've got a lot of these mercenaries, these soldiers from the Africa battalion who are there, and lots of people from different nationalities. I think there are some Spaniards, Italians, I think even some Irish, Polish. You mentioned there's one woman amongst them.
[26:18] A terrible experience for her. Yeah. But this is definitely the runt of the Medusa's crew, if you like, and passengers are on this raft because all the people with connections, all the people of certain status would have ended up on a nice lifeboat. You're sounding like Captain Oog there. Leave the runts on the raft. You've got a recipe for trouble and we will see that trouble brews very, very quickly. So...
[26:42] You're right, the carpenter, there is a carpenter on board. He quickly builds a little mast and a sail. But the vessel, of course, is not seaworthy at all. And we think that in the first night...
[26:53] 12 people die. So there's a storm, isn't there? There's a storm, 12 people washed out, washed off the raft, and they're dead. The next morning, this is a really horrible moment. The next morning, three bakers, so a baker and I think his two apprentices, they just think this is disastrous. They jump off into the ocean and they kill themselves. But that tells you the extremity of the situation within a matter of hours of having been abandoned.
[27:18] This is the first morning they wake up on the raft that they're doing that. And actually, as we shall see, it was probably quite a good decision to make. Because what would happen next would be so much worse than just drowning in the space of a few seconds or minutes. Presumably, that sort of initial night with the storm, you know, you're going to have huge waves just washing right over this raft, totally unprotected.
[27:38] huge mass of people huddled together. And it's quite, I mean, it's been built quickly under trying circumstances. And there's this sense that the whole thing, you know, if you put your leg down or your arm in the wrong place, suddenly, two massive bits of wood are going to crush your limbs. So people are in despair, clearly already.
[27:58] Yeah. And as the waves get worse and the weather gets worse, the passengers are lurched from one side of the raft to the other. Other people are crushed in the movement of the passengers. Then we get to the second night.
[28:13] Oh dear, the second night is the worst of all the nights. Because the second night, a group of soldiers, you mentioned the soldiers on the raft, they break into a cask of wine, they drink it, and they decide, look, we're going to destroy the raft, we're going to kill everyone, we've got to end this. So drunkenly they start doing this. There's an enormous fight. There are people being clubbed to death, people being stabbed to death, people having their eyes gouged out. And in that second night...
[28:39] 60 people, six zero people are killed in the space of that second night. So effectively, you've lost half of the passengers on the raft, the survivors already. Very, very quickly. And there are further riots. Of course, more people are killed. And then obviously, as the days go on on this raft, the people are getting weaker. The people are getting sicker. The people are getting hungrier.
[29:07] So you've got storms, you've got the infighting of the passengers, you've got the sun, which itself must have been beyond punishing. And constantly your skin is wet from the waves, which are kind of falling over the raft.
[29:23] presumably there are all sorts of things like there are sharks massing around this thing. Yeah, it is a terrible cocktail of circumstances, it has to be said. And so as the men get hungry, as the people get hungry, they start to eat leather. They start to eat harnesses and scabbards. They start to eat bits of fabric. They start to eat bits of their clothes. One is on the verge of eating his own excrement. Yeah.
[29:49] And then at one point they decide to do the unthinkable Alistair. And this is what Jonathan Miles, who has written a definitive book about the Raft of the Medusa, wrote. He wrote...
[30:00] On the third day of drifting helplessly, some of those left alive on board the raft, set upon the dead bodies strewn about, and started hacking off limbs and eagerly chomping on raw human flesh. They incised and pulled away the skin from a shoulder or stomach or thigh, and ate off the body, slicing or scooping out the brownish-purple flesh. Oh, wow. Awful.
[30:25] There's another riot. More mutineers are killed. So by now, of the original 147 people who went onto this raft, only 30 are still alive. I mean, the thing I always feel engaging with this story is clearly you think, what would it be like if I were on that raft? If I'd got to that point, if I hadn't been one of the people who'd sort of been washed off in the storm on night one or, you know,
[30:52] hacked at with a saber and killed in the mutinies on later in the course of proceedings, and I had survived, would I also eat human flesh for the sake of survival? Because initially, quite interesting again, the sort of classed,
[31:08] angle of the story. The officers who've survived, they don't really want to do it, do they? Other people, as we've just heard from that passage you've read out, do it with some alacrity because they're so hungry and in such desperate circumstances. But I don't think you can judge them at all. No, and over the subsequent days, they actually develop slightly more...
[31:30] palatable ways of eating human flesh and that they cut the flesh into strips and they dry it in the sun so it's a bit more like beef jerky or something like that right but anyway i mean that you know still there is not enough drink on this raft there is not enough food on this raft and so then another unthinkable thing is done and they decide to throw the weakest people off the raft to their deaths including the only woman on the raft and her father
[31:56] So I think this is a moment which for a lot of people, this is the sort of the most terrible moral moment, because the conundrum, as I understand it, is you've got you have these survivors. Many of them are pretty weak, and they're not going to survive this thing.
[32:14] But if you keep them on board the raft, they're going to use up the very limited supplies and provisions you have and imperil the chances of survival for those who are actually reasonably fit. Yes. So in a horribly brutal way...
[32:31] you can understand the thought process, even if still it feels totally beyond the pale. Yes. So now they do it. 15 people left. And early in the morning of the 17th of July, they are all very, very close to death at this point.
[32:48] While consuming their last tiny ration of wine, they notice a sail on the horizon. They scream, they shout, they wave with their handkerchiefs. The ship disappears, but then two hours later it returns. And it was the Argus. Yes. The Argus, the good old British made Argus brig. The British brig. Which had been looking for the Medusa for days. So those 15 souls aboard the raft are rescued.
[33:14] Just very briefly, there was the captain of the Argus wrote a report to the governor. And again, it's very evocative of what had happened to the people on the raft. He said, those I rescued had fed themselves on human flesh for several days. And this is what you've been describing. At the moment when I found them, the ropes which held the mast were covered with morsels of this flesh that they'd hung up to dry. So there's the documentary evidence, sort of, you know, firsthand witness report.
[33:40] That's what they were doing. That's what they were doing. But these 15 men who were rescued, only 10 of them survived because five die in the subsequent days, weeks and months. In fact, a couple die on board the Argus because they're so hungry, they eat very, very quickly enormous amounts of food. And if you have been suffering...
[33:59] famine or starvation for a period of time and then suddenly you ingest lots of food you can send the body into shock so actually only 10 people survive before we go to the break alistair let's just wrap this story up so the french government when this story comes out the french government tried to contain the story in the aftermath it does begin to drip out in the autumn of
[34:19] 1816. But it only really becomes a scandal the following year in 1817, when two of the survivors of the raft, we'll meet them in the next part, the Medusa's surgeon, a man called Henri Savigny, and a geographer and engineer called Alexandre Corriard, published this bestselling book about the event.
[34:41] In the end, there is some justice done. The captain, he's court-martialed, he's sacked from the Navy, he's stripped of his honours, he's sentenced to three years in prison, which isn't very much really. I don't think he even serves all of that. No, I don't know if he does. In a way, it's quite lenient. Yeah. And the governor, the intended governor of Senegal, is forced to resign.
[35:01] So it's quite the story. Yeah. But our listeners, our viewers might be wondering why we're telling it on a podcast called Stories of Art. Well, that's because the remarkable artist Jericho would soon transform it into an era-defining masterpiece. And to hear how he did it, join us after the break.
[35:26] A reminder that if you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time. And if you're enjoying this episode, please consider following Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.
[35:44] Welcome back to Stories of Art. In the first part, we talked about the tragic story of the Medusa, the shipwreck, the wrath, the needless loss of more than 100 human lives. In this part, Alistair, we are going to talk about the masterpiece that emerges from it. This is the art bit. This is the art bit. And that masterpiece was made by a young French artist called Théodore Jéricho. Amazing figure. Yeah, what do we know about him at this point?
[36:12] Well, we know that he dies young. He has a short career. But in terms of his beginnings, he's born in 1791. He's born into a middle class, business minded family. And he grows up in his very earliest years in Rouen.
[36:29] And then 1796, parents moved to Paris. He attends the Lycée Imperial. And early on, he has an aptitude for drawing. He knows he wants to be an artist, or rather really enjoys drawing and making art. He also loves horses, which is going to be quite important in terms of Jericho's subsequent career.
[36:52] And I think he's very good looking as well, isn't he? Well, fantastic legs, apparently. It's interesting you mentioned the legs, James, because this comes. We know this because, first of all, he has a moment where his mother dies very young. So this is 1808.
[37:08] And as a result of this, and there's the subsequent death of his grandmother who also leaves him some money, he essentially becomes financially independent. And so despite his dad, who he got on very well with having misgivings and objections about his son becoming an artist...
[37:23] because no one in the family really was of an artistic intellectual persuasion. So it's quite strange in the sense that he wants to do this. Géricault is adamant that he's going to be an artist. And of course, if you're going to be an artist, you have to train. And he ends up initially going to learn the craft, as it were, under a French artist called Carl Vernet. And this is the man. This is the man who is a royalist. He's an Anglophile.
[37:47] He's a painter of history and a painter of horses. And it's Vernet who reveals that Jericho had really admirable legs. Oh, I didn't realise that was the source. It's the source. And I don't think Vernet takes him enormously seriously. He senses someone who is very dandy-ish. Clearly, he's very attractive to women. But he's not necessarily, in the master's opinion, going to be...
[38:15] Brilliant artist material. And quite soon, Jericho goes and studies under someone else. This classicist Pierre Guerin. And then quite soon after that, he leaves that studio and just spends a lot of time in the Louvre, copying old masters, works by Rubens or Van Dyck and Rembrandt. And I think that's indicative of he has an independent streak.
[38:40] Yes. Because some of his teachers, as well as talking about, you know, having the admirable legs, they see him as quite an unruly presence, someone who can't really be taught. And there's that inner sense of...
[38:53] individualism and a spontaneity about his approach, particularly at that moment, which interestingly become hallmarks of the wider art movement of romanticism with which he's so synonymous. He's very temperamental, isn't he? Yeah. He's pretty much self-taught, actually. He goes to these two individuals, but he's not really paying attention. He's just learning from these great paintings.
[39:18] In Luz. And actually, after his death, they find in his studio, there are 60, still then, there are 62 copies of the Old Masters which he's created, which are discovered in the studio, which gives you the sense of how much he's doing this. Yeah. As you say, he's self-taught. Yeah. And you say he's a man for the ladies...
[39:36] There is a particularly powerful and difficult moment in his life when he starts an affair with his art. Yeah, this is all a bit awkward, but it's crucial for his own emotional life and indeed development as an artist, really, because he has an uncle who's a lot older and round about the time that Jericho's mother dies, I think it may be a year before 1807, this uncle marries a much, much younger woman.
[40:02] called Alexandrine, who becomes his art by that marriage. She's not so much older than Jericho himself, and she is very sympathetic to the arts. And they become friends partly with the blessing of the older husband, who's very busy, and...
[40:23] And over the course of several years, whilst Jericho is studying in the Louvre, and then he has this great success at the 1812 Salon, the really important place where you're going to make it as an artist, you need to present work. He's only 21. His first great picture he shows there and it wins a gold medal. It's called the Officer of the Chasseurs.
[40:43] It's actually amazing when you think 21 years old, unknown man, basically self-taught and wins a gold medal at the salon. That's an indication of the talent he had. I was only going to say that the affair starts happening at this sort of moment in his life. But I think you're absolutely right. We should have a brief moment to think about this painting that makes his name initially, you know, Total Unknown.
[41:06] It's a cavalryman in a really fine uniform, dark green jacket, curved sword, white trousers, who is on a rearing horse, which has the most wonderful saddle with a leopard skin to throw seemingly over it, a big white horse. And he's turning back. He has this big, impressive hat that looks like one of those black bear skins, but probably is something slightly different with a huge plume that comes above it.
[41:31] And I think there you have a sense of Jericho's interest in, as I say, the ability. He was a great rider, horse rider, and he loves horses. Here is a horse which this man is controlling expertly, but also the sense of his dandyish sensibility. He loves the uniform. And you then have to look at what's going on in the background. This is mid-battle, and there's this terrible melee behind him. And you have this contrast between...
[42:00] imperial trappings, if you like, of the soldier of the cavalryman, and then the awfulness of the battle that surrounds him. There feels like there's a disjunction between those two elements. And of course, later when he comes, just a few years later, comes to paint his great masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa, that sense of the catastrophe of suffering, that's really come to the fore. Yeah.
[42:22] It's an extraordinary breakthrough work. It really is. But as you say, he has this affair with his aunt. He gets her pregnant. This causes him no end of grief and anxiety. As you well might expect. As you might imagine. And so what he actually does is he disappears to Italy. He goes to Italy where he discovers...
[42:41] the great work of the Italian Renaissance, discovers the work of his hero, Michelangelo. Well, it's worth saying, James, that initially he thinks there's a particular way of doing it where he's going to sit for this thing called the Prix de Rome. Yeah. So there's this great, I think it's a four-year scholarship that was available and offered, very prestigious thing to get. And he tries to win a place on this. He tries to get one of these scholarships and he fails. Yeah.
[43:05] But because he is independently wealthy, and perhaps, as you've alluded to, perhaps because emotionally he's in turmoil with the situation with his aunt and this full-blown love affair, he thinks, I'm still going to go to Italy. This is an important part of training. And it's a crucial moment when he's in Italy. He paints more horses. Of course he does. He paints some riderless horses. There's this brilliant Roman carnival, and at the end of it, these riderless horses kind of just...
[43:27] kind of madness erupts kind of going through the city and Jericho decides that's going to be the subject for one of his great works which he prepares for but never actually achieves and he's concerned again with the texture of real life I think that's his in a sense that's his modernity is that he yes he's looking at the great masters he's overwhelmed by encountering Michelangelo but
[43:57] He returns to Paris at the end of 1817. He's now 26 years old. This is quite a significant coincidence because at exactly the same time as he returns to France, this is the moment at which the book...
[44:13] about the Medusa is published by those two survivors of the raft. And at some point after that, late 1817, beginning of 1818, Jericho becomes obsessed with this story, completely obsessed. So he buys the book, he collects all the newspaper cuttings, he seeks out the survivors of the raft. Well, he's spotted artistic potential in this, hasn't he?
[44:36] He does. He is really desperate for a new big subject for his next salon painting. And he thinks, you know, he thinks this is the makings of a great subject. But that in itself is quite a radical thing. This is a news event. This is a contemporary news event. And as you say, he's looking at newspaper cuttings. And then he has this very modern approach where he's interviewing the survivors. He interviews the survivors. He gets a carpenter to make a scale model of the raft.
[45:04] I think it's the carpenter. The carpenter who was on the raft. I mean, I think if he were alive now, Jericho would be doing a true crime podcast about the raft of the Medusa. But it's the 1810s. Painting is what he's got. So he decides that he is going to make a great painting on the subject of the raft of the Medusa. He's done all this research. He then moves to a studio on the outskirts of Paris.
[45:27] And he shaves his hair off, which is often seen as something very significant. Oh, hugely significant. And it's like a distillation of the transformation that Jericho undergoes. Because before he goes to Italy, there's this quite famous incident where a friend who's planning to accompany him turns up at Jericho's place and he discovers Jericho getting ready for a ball.
[45:51] You've mentioned that he had these admirable legs. He also had these rather beautiful, supposedly reddish curls. And he's there primping the curls with some papers to give added bounce to his hair. We do that before each episode, don't we? Of course. Clearly. And this friend sort of soon after that says, actually, you know what? For reasons I can't quite divulge, I can't actually come to Italy.
[46:14] And Jericho thinks, oh, God, is it because I'm just too vain and too frivolous a person? Now, fast forward to post-Italy, to his engagement with the Raft of the Medusa story. And here he is shaving his head. It's clearly, it's a sign. So he's shaving his hair. And the sign seems to be, in the words of the novelist Julian Barnes, it's a do not disturb sign. Julian Barnes has written beautifully about the Raft of the Medusa saga. Yeah.
[46:44] And I love that idea. It's sort of signalling to the world, I'm out of social circulation. I'm going to raw dog this. Absolutely. And this is going to be, you know, I need some time. And he basically, he does take himself out, doesn't he? He does. He sleeps next to the studio. Yeah. I mean, he spends eight months in the studio, barely leaves the studio. He has his food actually brought to him in the studio. The only times he goes out of the studio space is to go to the local hospital and,
[47:10] because he has made some agreement with the staff in the hospital that he can sketch people as they're dying, and not just sketch people as they're dying, actually take away bits of human bodies. I mean, this is... Yeah, it's worth pausing just to reflect on what is going on here. So he is...
[47:27] He is trying... What is going on? Is he trying to get in the right mindset for painting something which is so disastrous and awful? I think it's partly the right mindset. I think he also wants to sketch from life, as it were, the process of human decay. He wants to see what it's like to see a human being
[47:44] die because that is what is happening to those people on the raft. So he goes and he sketches people as they're becoming very ill. And he will often go to the hospital with a bag and put in an arm or a leg or, in one case, a severed head, bring it back to the studio. He has the head perched on a table, studying as it begins to rot because he wants to capture the absolute reality, the truth, the physical gory truth of what it's like to see people waste away
[48:13] So he paints these anatomical fragments. I've always wondered whether that ship surgeon who writes the account of the Raft of the Medusa, could he have been involved? Because it's not that easy. You can't just walk into hospital and say, right, I'll have three severed limbs. Thanks very much. I mean, someone is doing him a favour.
[48:30] I've always wondered whether it might be that surgeon Henri Savigny. Yeah, that's a good theory. He also goes to the morgue. And of course, at that point in France, the morgue was publicly accessible. Some people went to the morgue as, you know, Sunday entertainment. Right. Of course, the purpose of it was that you would be able to identify the dead and be able to say, oh, that's my uncle or that's my cousin or that's my son. But people would go for a bit of fun.
[48:53] Just James, very briefly one thing that has always puzzled me about this because you have this moment of the preparation, the working on the painting and it's so dramatic the shaving of the head and then having these anatomical fragments, his amputated limbs, the severed head that he's painting in the studio but when it comes to actually the painting itself of the Raft of the Medusa he uses live models he almost rejects that
[49:22] totally extreme, gory, gruesome realism for something slightly different, which I've always found a bit puzzling. Yeah, he has models coming in and out of the studio. In fact, he has the survivors. Some of the survivors of the raft come to model for him. A couple of his friends, so the great artist Eugene Delacroix, models for him as well. And he undertakes the picture in actually quite a traditional art historical way. He makes hundreds and hundreds of studies. He spends eight months working on this picture.
[49:51] And eventually he completes it some point in the middle of 1819. There is an irresistible, you mentioned Delacroix, and I don't know whether you were coming to this already, but it's an irresistible quotation. Because many years later, Delacroix, he's one of the great 19th century French painters, again, associated with Romanticism. You can see, I mean, it's one of my favourite paintings, the Louvre, this kind of orgy, this melee called The Death of Sardanapalus, which is hung opposite the raft of the Medusa today in the Louvre.
[50:21] And Delacroix is inspired by Jericho. And as you say, he models for this figure in the foreground face down with her left arm stretched out in the finished painting, the Raft of the Medusa. And years later, he recalled this terrifying effect. I think it's fascinating testimony.
[50:37] Because what he said was that the impression It, the painting, gave me was so strong that as I left the studio, I broke into a run and kept running like a madman all the way back to the far end of the Faubourg suburb, Saint-Germain. And...
[50:54] The reason I think that's so telling is that he's clearly totally disturbed by what he's seen in Jericho's studio in which he's participated. So even though you have this relatively conventional, in some ways, approach to composition, to using the live model...
[51:13] He's looking at the results and thinking, what is that? And it's getting in his head so much that he has to sprint off feeling totally disturbed. Well, let's talk about the painting itself then that inspired that reaction in Delacroix. I think the first thing to say, and you alluded to this at the very beginning of this episode...
[51:32] It's an enormous painting. It's more than seven metres wide. It's almost five metres high. It's actually about the size of my garden, Alistair. It's not as big as your garden, but it's about the size of my garden. So can you describe it for us, Alistair? Well, it is the scene of lots of the survivors of the mayhem that happened on the raft of the Medusa
[51:56] towards the end of this terrible trip, adventure, journey that they'd been on. So you see a raft, some of which is falling apart. And behind it, you have a huge wave that's rearing up as if it's about to break over these people.
[52:13] On the raft itself, you have this very strong sort of pyramid shape where you have the mast that goes up towards the top left and then a huge, well, not that big, a sail, which is catching the wind next to the mast and sort of mirrors, in a sense, the wave that's behind it. And then on the raft itself, you just have beneath, on the horizon, there's sunlight but very dark, glaring clouds nearer in the sky above.
[52:40] On the raft, you've got this pile-up of bodies in rags, some of them naked, some of them totally pale. And you realise quickly that in the foreground particularly, you're looking at the dead. You're looking at corpses. There's one man, you just see his torso and you think, well, why is he that colour? Clearly he's dead. Where are his legs? Well, they must have gone through the raft and are in the water. You imagine them in the water that we can't see beneath the raft.
[53:08] And then next to him, you have this crucial figure in the composition where there's a much older man who has grey hair, grey beard. He has this red headcloth neckerchief thing which is draped over his head and he has his head on his hand and he looks so despondent, so glum, and he's clutching a corpse, presumably of his son, which is on his lap. It's this moment of total pity and desperation.
[53:38] But it also captures a moment of hope. And, you know, when Jericho decided to create a picture about the raft of the Medusa, he could have chosen a number of different moments. Yes, I find this so interesting. And he experiments with lots of different moments. I mean, you think about it, you could do the moment the Medusa crashes into the sandbank. You could do the moment the lifeboats are launched. You could do the moment, that very controversial moment, when the tow rope is cut. I mean, that would be dramatic. That would be pretty good.
[54:03] You could depict the riots on board the raft. You could depict the cannibalism. And he did experiment with depicting the cannibalism. Yeah, so he's thinking about these different avenues, isn't he? They're like the options. There's one that I really like. I'm not sure whether we mentioned it in the part before, but there is a moment whilst they're on the raft where towards the end they do get hope because a little white butterfly...
[54:26] suddenly arrives and settles, I think, on the sail or on the mast. And it's the sort of common white butterfly you might find back home in France on a summer's day. And of course, butterflies don't fly that far from land. So it's telling them, well, some of them think, oh, something to eat at last. But I don't think it's going to really be very sustaining. But it finally gives them hope. And you could imagine to an artist that would be presumably quite tempting to have this moment of the butterfly arriving on the raft
[54:53] But it would also feel probably a bit too sickly sweet, sentimental in terms of hope. And you have the issue of like big raft loads of people. Yeah. Tiny little butterfly. How is that going to be legible in the painting? Although, of course, in the final painting, what you do see tiny is that speck on the horizon that some of the people on the raft are waving at towards the back of the raft, which is the Argus. Yes. Yes.
[55:18] This is the moment he chooses. He chooses the moment when they spot the Argus. I don't think the Argus has spotted them, but they spot the Argus. I think this is a masterstroke because I think it enables Jericho to capture the full emotional range of this event. And as you say, it's a very strict pyramidal structure. It guides the eye from the bottom left to the top right. And as your eye moves from the bottom left to the top right,
[55:43] you were taken on a journey, an emotional journey really, from despair and death to hope and salvation. Or is it hope and salvation? Because of course at this moment they don't know whether that ship is going to save them. So it could be pulling the rug from under our feet as the viewer in a sense.
[56:00] And the other thing that I think is fantastic about this picture, we mentioned it right at the beginning, is how immersive and cinematic it is. And one of the things Jericho does is he uses every tool in the toolbox to make this picture overpower us. So first of all, it's very large, as we've said, but also he tilts the raft down.
[56:22] right to the base of the canvas. So you feel like you could almost step onto that raft and it's hung very low in the Louvre even now. The other thing he does is you can see right at the bottom of the picture, there's the waves, there's the froth. That froth seems to almost spill over the frame into the gallery space. There are dead bodies that are almost falling over the frame into the gallery space.
[56:43] So really, he's doing this extraordinary thing of breaking the fourth wall of that canvas, really, in order to make this picture feel like it's overwhelming us. It's a very, very dramatic mastery of composition.
[56:59] I think the mastery thing is, again, what's so fascinating because it's easy to look at this painting and to think to yourself, OK, dramatic, catastrophic tale of suffering and woe, contemporary news story, how radical. But, of course, what you're describing is the...
[57:14] almost classical artistry with which he's controlling and orchestrating the image. And you see little moments like that, allusions, if you like, to tradition. Oh, it's full of art historical references, isn't it? So, I mean, one that, you know, well, I mean, there are a few, but...
[57:30] One that catches my eye is the most prominent figure is the one who's waving at the top of the pyramid you've described, who's sort of almost standing on, supported on someone's shoulders on top of a barrel, waving these sort of makeshift flag to try and get the attention of the Argus in the distance. And you mostly see his back.
[57:52] And I mean, that in itself actually is not a moment of classical tradition. One of the radical aspects of this painting is loads of them have their backs to us. I mean, I kind of love that. There's no clear hero. There's no clear moralising story. You see a bunch of people who are turning their backs on the viewer, apart from that despondent guy in the front. But this particular back that I'm talking about is a famous, well, it's an allusion to a very famous ancient work of art,
[58:18] This is the Belvedere Torso, is it? James, well done. It is the Belvedere Torso, which is this ancient sculpture of a very powerful man's back that was known throughout Europe. It was a total touchstone, along with a handful of other works that have survived from antiquity to artists at this moment. So that is a sort of, it's a learned reference. Mm-hmm.
[58:39] And there's another, I mean, there's the Dante reference. Are we getting into that? Well, there's the guy on the left of the raft. You've described him who's there holding the body of, we presume, his son. I think that's inspired by Ugolino, who's this figure from Italian history who I think actually, and this is perhaps an allusion to cannibalism, I think ended up eating his own children.
[58:59] Yes. But there are also references to Titian, I think. There are references to Rubens. There are loads of references to Michelangelo, one of Jericho's heroes. It's one of the reasons why all of these figures are incongruously muscular. I mean, when you think they've been at sea for almost two weeks, they've had no food, they are not going to look...
[59:18] in this kind of shape. I mean, they look like it's a bunch of sort of bodybuilders where people have been at the gym endlessly. And that in itself, I mean, I think some people at the time even spotted this as being a bit of a discrepancy. Yeah. And again, I mean, I would love to hear your thoughts as to what's going on here. Well, I think it is a crucial part of the purpose of the picture. I think Jericho is consciously trying to make a history painting
[59:47] in the grand manner. Yeah. The grand style. In the grand style. He's making this for the salon. He wants to, you know, absolutely blow the doors off of the salon. And so he's deliberately looking back to the great history painters of the past, the great frescoists of the past.
[1:00:04] But isn't that interesting because I think culturally there's a bias always to sort of praise the more radical moments in art. And this is a radical painting, but it has things, elements to it which are not so radical. It's within the context. I think you're exactly right. That's one of the things that makes this picture so fascinating is it can be both things at the same time. It's a grand history painting, you know, using many, many studies to build it up based on some of the great works of the history of art. Yeah.
[1:00:33] But most history paintings at this time, Alistair, would have been a couple of things. They would have, A, been about either religion or ancient history, and B, they would have been about heroic moments, moments of great human achievement. This is neither of those things. This is a history painting that is not about ancient history, it's about...
[1:00:52] current affairs, effectively. And it's not heroic, it's anti-heroic. It's about human beings at their very lowest ebb. You see, I find the current affairs context fascinating because, yes, that's what's inspired this painting, but...
[1:01:08] Jericho actually deviates and melds and adapts and changes. He's moved away from many of the reporterial details, if you like, that could have come from the account written by that surgeon Savigny and by Alexandre Corriard, the bestseller that told the story of the Rafter of the Medusa. And he's done that because it suits his artistic purposes to do so, to create a more satisfying painting, a more persuasive painting, and one that transcends...
[1:01:37] And if you like, the thing about this painting is that the whole story of the Raft of the Medusa is amazing and unbelievable and gripping and terrible and terrifying and all of those things. But I don't think this painting is really about that saga at all. It's about something else. It's about...
[1:01:57] humanity. It's about the human condition, the predicament. It's about facing overwhelming odds, trying to get by in a kind of a world of adversity. And in a sense, this is all of us. This is a society. This is, you know, that figure, the only one facing the viewer, the one with the beard, the grey hair. He looks so despairing, but he also looks very intelligent, I think.
[1:02:21] He has the vibe of a Greek philosopher almost. And I think that his despondency is partly look at what the reality of human nature is. We as animals, as creatures, are not pleasant beings. He's completely lost faith in the human project. And it feels like perhaps it's...
[1:02:41] a response to that wider disillusionment with the Enlightenment projects, the moment of revolution, and then under Napoleon, everything is changing. And this is the beginnings of that romantic backlash, if you like. You know, in that sense, I think it speaks to people, not just those who will be familiar with the details of the Medusa story, if you like. Yeah, and when the painting was exhibited at the salon, it wasn't called The Raft of the Medusa, it was called Scene of a Shipwreck.
[1:03:10] Right. So it was it was trying to make a broader point. There's one thing I think we've got to talk about in this painting before we move on. And that is the fact that there are, I think, three black figures in the picture. This is, I think, pretty remarkable. Well, one of them is the fellow whose back is based on the Belvedere Torset, you know.
[1:03:29] white off-white piece of marble. And you have at the apex of the composition, one of, if not the most prominent figure in the composition is a black man. How unusual is that at this time? Well, I mean, the short answer is it's unusual. And not only that, but there are three black figures in this painting.
[1:03:49] And all of them were modelled by, we know the model, a Haitian man. We don't know his surname, but he was called Joseph, an artist model, professional model. And I think, it's not just me thinking this, I mean, it's quite obvious. Jericho is clearly making some serious socio-political points by including black figures so prominently within the painting, isn't he? Do you think it's a point against slavery? It's got to be.
[1:04:17] don't you think? I mean, you know, if you think of the historical context, the British have abolished slavery in, I think, 1807. The French, I'm and I, it's abolished, comes back. What many elements within France know is that it's hugely lucrative and profitable, and it essentially carries on.
[1:04:38] And so when that bestseller about the Rafter of the Medusa is released, part of the uproar amongst the French public is, hang on, what's going on? We have slaving ships on the coast of West Africa. We're still involved in that, are we? And it becomes this rallying cause or cry for progressives within France.
[1:04:56] And I assume, I mean, strongly suspect that's what's going on here. Jericho is aligning himself in this painting with that progressive cause and showing in a heroic way a black figure central to this masterpiece. That's such a compelling point you've made. And I think even if we don't take that political point, and you've definitely persuaded me,
[1:05:22] The fact that he is depicting these black figures at the heart of this major, major painting, not as racist caricatures, but as human beings in the same way that he would depict white figures, and also that he's showing them not as subordinate minor characters, but as absolutely central to the drama of this picture. And not only that, the figure who's waving the handkerchief, he is the node of hope. He is the kind of conduit of this character.
[1:05:49] Raft being rescued. That in itself is remarkable. And we know that some of Jericho's contemporaries interpreted it in this way. Yes. There's an art critic, of course, I always like to quote art critics in this podcast, James. I wonder why.
[1:06:05] called Charles Blanc. And he's writing a little bit later, 1845, but he's talking about that man, the black man who's signalling against the sky and saying, he's pointing out that that man, that figure is not in the bottom of the hold, which of course is where enslaved people were transported when they were crossing the Atlantic.
[1:06:23] Not in the bottom of the hold, but he's the one who saves everybody. Isn't it admirable how great adversity has all at once re-established equality between the races? It's a poor slave who rescues these spurned and enslaved men, and it takes place on the same coast where we go to take his brothers and put them in captivity. Critics always get it right, don't they? Damn right.
[1:06:47] But it's interesting that he's, I mean, OK, it's a little dewy-eyed about re-establishing equality between the races. I'm not sure that this painting quite did that. But explicitly, people are reading that sense of history into the work. Yeah. Well, the picture goes on display at the Salon in the summer of 1819. It gets a mixed response. Not everyone is as positive as Charles Blanc. Although our friend the Boring King,
[1:07:13] You described it as so boring. He quite likes it, doesn't he? I think he did quite like it. He goes up. Yeah, there's a story that the king, King Louis XVIII, he goes up to see the picture at the opening and Jericho's standing there. Hopefully his hair's grown back by the stage at the picture. And he says it's actually a comment that doesn't really make a great deal of sense to us. So we need to unpack it. He says, sir, you have made a shipwreck, which is not one for you.
[1:07:37] Yes. And I think by that he means, well, you've depicted a shipwreck, but you haven't wrecked your own career. You've done a good job. And Jericho gets a gold medal. But it's not a rip-roaring success. There are mixed responses. It's not hung in a very good place. Jericho's slightly disappointed, given the enormous amount of time and effort and energy he's put into the picture. He's a bit disappointed by the reception.
[1:07:59] I think that part of it is it becomes this, you know, we know that it causes a huge uproar at the Salon and part of it is it becomes this cause celeb. Yes. It's people are looking at it and at that moment a lot of them are seeing the scandal of the Medusa saga writ large in the painting. And of course that King moment, Louis XVIII's remark...
[1:08:20] is very interesting because you could see the painting as a broadside against the Restoration, against the Bourbon monarchy, against those hapless people who've appointed the likes of the Captain Oug de Chamouret, who disastrously led the expedition to Senegal, and perhaps it was
[1:08:39] very largely his fault that the Raft of the Medusa thing happened at all. And so the King's maybe being quite magnanimous, but certainly, and I think you always see this, but a lot of the critics divide into more conservative types. You see it as an attack, see it as really ugly. They don't like the clear radical originality of it. And then more progressive types who are quite excited. But even some of they are saying, well, hang on, but why are those figures so classicising to come back to that point?
[1:09:05] So it is hugely controversial. It's very controversial. It's actually much more successful. The following year, it goes to London. It's displayed in London in 1820 at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly.
[1:09:18] So how's this come about? Do we know? Well, I can't remember how it comes about, but this is a private scheme. And it's a guy who runs the Egyptian Hall, whose name escapes me, decides that he's going to put the painting on display and he's going to charge admission. William Bullock. That's it, Bullock. I knew it was something like that. William Bullock. And this picture is seen by 50,000 people. Wow.
[1:09:38] And it makes Jericho a small fortune. He makes an enormous amount of money actually from it, much more than he would from selling the picture to the state. It then goes on display in Dublin where it's less successful. But I think the thing is, I think, you know, we go back to what Louis XVIII said. He said, you know, it has not made a shipwreck of you. I think this painting did make a shipwreck of Jericho. I think he never really recovered from it. He put so much of his time
[1:10:03] so much of his mental energy, his physical resources into making this vast, vast painting that must have been traumatic in some ways emotionally to depict, that he's never the same person again afterwards. He becomes... Well, he's depressed, isn't he, for a bit? He becomes very depressed. He suffers a nervous breakdown. He also develops a kind of death wish. He makes various suicide attempts. You've said earlier how he loves riding. He's a very good horseman, but he starts to ride very recklessly...
[1:10:33] around Paris and starts to have these accidents. And one of them, probably 1822, so it's a few years after the Medusa gets displayed, he gets this very severe spinal injury from which he never recovers. There are various conflicting reports about the surgery that is undertaken on that injury. One report says that he did it himself. He operated on his own spine. Really? Another says that he refused sedation because he wanted to be able to watch what was happening. Yeah.
[1:11:02] But really, he never recovers. We think he probably also had tuberculosis. And I think that's really the problem, isn't it? That's slowly destroying his spinal column. You mentioned before Delacroix, and we spoke about him in modelling. He is relevant here as well because... Oh, yeah.
[1:11:18] I mean, this is really moving. He writes about encountering Jericho. This is the end of 1823, isn't it? So Jericho is really very poorly at this stage. The tuberculosis has aggravated the spinal injury. The spinal injury has aggravated the tuberculosis. And he's on his deathbed, I presume? Yeah.
[1:11:36] Pretty close. Delacroix writes in his journal, he's seen Jericho a few days earlier, and he says, he's dying, his emaciation is dreadful to see, thighs no thicker than my arms, and head like that of an ancient dying man. To die in the midst of all this, which he's created in the full vigour and fire of his youth, and now he cannot even turn in his bed without assistance.
[1:12:00] And he's a young man. He's really young. He's in his early 30s. A month later, on the 26th of January, 1824, Jericho dies, age 32.
[1:12:11] What do we think of the legacy of Jericho and of this picture, Alistair? The big thing for me is this emergence of Romanticism. So Jericho is born and into a world in which a different art movement called Neoclassicism was really to the fore. And it's an art movement that's about clarity, order, coherence, being in touch with antiquity, inspired by many of the archaeological discoveries and excavations of the 18th century.
[1:12:39] But around the time of the revolution and then the turn of the 19th century, you have this new movement. It begins in literature, romanticism, quickly spreads to the visual arts as well. And it's almost a backlash to the Enlightenment. And it's about things like imagination, individuality.
[1:12:58] praising, well, often dealing with unruly, unstoppable nature, awesome forces in the natural world, those riderless horses. And Jericho is a key, key champion, if you like, of this new movement. He's helping to shape it. And the Raft of the Medusa is a romantic work of art par excellence. And Jericho himself is a kind of romantic figure. He is, yeah. He's the kind of doomed, flawed genius who dies very young.
[1:13:26] And he's not the only one, is he? I mean, the 1820s, romantic figures, they're dropping like flies, Alistair. So, you know, that same time you've got John Keats dies three years earlier. He's only 25. Percy Shelley dies two years earlier. He's only 29. In the same year as Jericho dies, Byron dies. Byron is the ancient age of 36. So he's definitely part of this tragic generation that have, in hindsight, certainly been seen as the great romantic generation.
[1:13:53] And the Romantics, one of the things that they were obsessed with was the idea of the fragment. This became really evocative for them, and it's often something that is addressed in both literature and visual art. And in a sense, Géricault himself, in terms of art history, he is this fragment. Life cut short so early, only really three major, major paintings that are shown at the Salon. We've spoken about two in some depth, but one of them clearly is The Raft of the Medusa.
[1:14:21] And there's this sense of unfulfilled talent and promise, which is part of the narrative about him that was so inspiring to romantic artists like Delacroix who followed. Yeah, like rock stars in the 20th century. It's the same thing, isn't it? It's the Amy Winehouse effect. And very briefly...
[1:14:40] He's also important for a whole other strand of 19th century art because you were describing so evocatively before his painting in the studio of those anatomical fragments, his engagement with the real world. He becomes quite inspirational for the so-called realists who come later. We don't have time really to go into it now, but right towards the end of his life, he has a very strange commission. He paints people who are patients in a psychiatric institution. Maybe it's another episode on...
[1:15:07] Well, we should. I mean, they're amazing pictures. But it's like he sort of predicts romanticism and also the realism of the 19th century in such a short career. Well, as it happens, Alistair, I think actually the realism is, for me, the bigger legacy of this painting. I think it's this obsessive research that he undertakes to tell at the very grandest scale.
[1:15:29] the story of a real event in as much accuracy as he can do within the confines of a history painting. I think this is really, really significant. And I think it is hard, if you look forward through culture, it's hard to imagine...
[1:15:44] Well, Guernica is the obvious example. It's hard, but you can go beyond painting. It's hard to imagine Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It's hard to imagine Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave. It's hard to imagine Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk. It's hard to imagine even that ITV drama, Mr Bates in the Post Office, without thinking about this as some kind of precedent. Try this attempt to use art in the broadest possible way
[1:16:12] to tell the truth about an event and to expose corruption and scandal. And I think in that sense, I think the raft of the Medusa anticipates a very important strand in contemporary and modern culture. But I think it's an artfully distorted truth.
[1:16:27] So all of those specifics, I mean, he had to go through that process to create the painting. And those real events were so important. And the modernity of it is engaging with a new story in that sense. But at the same time, it's somehow universalised so that it works on some deep, profound level, even if you're not totally au fait with all of the details of the Medusa saga. That's the bit, I think, that makes it a great work of art rather than just an in-depth piece of pictorial journalism.
[1:16:54] Absolutely. You can walk into the Louvre today, have no sense of the story of the Raft of the Medusa, and still be bowled over by this absolutely incredible work of art that is about what it means to be human in many ways. So thank you very much for joining us. And I hope, I promise that next time we'll be doing something less bloodthirsty. Goodbye. Goodbye.
[1:17:19] If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts, and maybe even leave a review.

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