Theodore Géricault. Raft of the Medusa. 1818 - 1819 Canvas, oil. 491cm x 716cm. Paris, Louvre
"Neither poetry nor painting can ever express
horror and torment experienced by people on a raft"
Theodore Géricault
No matter how tired and satiated with impressions the visitor of the Louvre, he will certainly stop in the 77th room of the Denon Gallery in front of the painting "The Raft of the Medusa" and, forgetting fatigue, will begin to examine the huge canvas. The public, which first saw the painting at the Paris Salon exhibition in August 1819, was as struck by it as it was by our contemporaries. Newspapers wrote that crowds of visitors stopped "in front of this frightening picture that attracts every eye." The Parisians, unlike today's viewers, did not have to explain what the young painter Theodore Géricault (1791-1824) depicted. Although the painting was called "Scene of the Shipwreck", everyone unmistakably recognized the raft of the Medusa, the history of which was known to every Frenchman at that time.
Paintings by Théodore Géricault "The Wounded Cuirassier" (1814) and "The Raft of the Medusa" in the Louvre, Denon Gallery
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On June 17, 1816, a French naval expedition set off for Senegal, consisting of the frigate Medusa and three more ships. There were about 400 people on board the frigate - the new governor of the colony, officials, their families, soldiers of the so-called African battalion. The head of the expedition, the captain of the "Medusa" de Chaumare, was appointed to this position under patronage, and his incompetence manifested itself in the most fatal way. "Medusa" lost sight of the accompanying ships, and on the night of July 2 ran aground between the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of West Africa. A leak opened in the ship's hull, and it was decided to leave it, but there were not enough boats for everyone. As a result, the captain, the governor with his retinue and senior officers settled in boats, and 150 sailors and soldiers boarded a raft built under the guidance of engineer Alexander Correar. The boats were supposed to tow the raft to the shore, but at the first sign of bad weather, the ropes connecting the boats to the raft burst (or were deliberately chopped off), and the boats sailed away.
Reconstruction of the raft "Medusa"
Already on the first night, people left on a crowded raft with almost no food and drink (since the shore was not far away, they decided not to overload the raft with supplies), entered into a bloody battle, winning water and safer places near the mast from each other. Murder, madness, cannibalism were their lot, until 12 days after the shipwreck, the Argus, one of the ships that accompanied the Medusa, removed 15 survivors from the raft. Five of them died soon after.
The boat sails away from the raft. Sketch by Theodore Géricault for the painting "The Raft of the Medusa".
The story of the shipwreck of the Medusa did not leave the newspaper pages, the surviving passengers of the raft, engineer Alexander Corréard and surgeon Henri Savigny, in November 1817 published the book “The Death of the Frigate Medusa”, in which they frankly, without hiding terrible details, told about the experience. But the story of "Medusa" did not become a topic of fine art until Theodore Géricault, who returned from a long trip to Italy shortly after the publication of the book, became interested in it. This native of Rouen received a good art education and has already attracted the attention of several works - portraits of Napoleonic officers on the battlefield, and the horses that Gericault loved from childhood occupied the artist no less than warriors.
Theodore Géricault. Self-portrait.
Gericault was financially independent and could afford to write his "Raft of the Medusa" for as long as he liked. The artist plunged into the events, modeled them, "staged" like a theatrical play, went through all the circles of this hell, for which he was later called in one of the newspapers "Dante in painting". He knew the book of Correar and Savigny by heart, got acquainted with all the documents, including the materials of the trial of the captain, talked for a long time with survivors of the rafting, painted their portraits.
Theodore Géricault. Officer of the horse rangers during the attack. 1812
He rented a huge workshop in which, with the help of the participants in the fateful voyage, a model of a raft was built. The artist placed wax figures on it, specifying the composition of the future painting. He traveled to the sea coast of Normandy to weather the storm and make sketches. He talked with doctors to imagine how extreme deprivation - hunger, thirst, fear - affects the body and mind of a person. Gericault made sketches in hospitals and morgues, sketched the faces of madmen in hospitals. He brought decaying remains from the mortuary and not only drew them, but sat surrounded by body fragments to imagine what it was like to be there on a raft. Few people could withstand the atmosphere of his workshop even for a few minutes, but he worked in it from morning to night.
More than a hundred sketches - in pen, gouache, oil - were made by Géricault in search of the plot of the picture. Fights, disgusting scenes of cannibalism, despair and madness, the moment of salvation ... the artist, after all, preferred the moment when a barely distinguishable sail appears on the horizon and it is not yet clear whether the raft will be noticed from the ship.
Raft battle. Sketch by Theodore Géricault for the painting "The Raft of the Medusa".
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In November 1818, Gericault retired to the studio, shaved his head so that there was no temptation to go out, and for eight months was left alone with a canvas of 35 square meters. meters. Only close friends entered the workshop, including the young Eugene Delacroix, who posed for one of the figures. Delacroix was among the first spectators: when he saw the picture, he was so shocked that "in delight he rushed to run like crazy, and could not stop until he got home."
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Fragments of bodies from the anatomical theater. Sketches by Theodore Géricault for the painting "The Raft of the Medusa".
The picture is really amazing, but by no means naturalistic, as one might expect: the artistic image turned out to be stronger than documentary. Where are the emaciated withered bodies, insane faces, half-decomposed corpses? Before us are athletes, beautiful even in death, and only a bloody ax in the lower right corner of the canvas reminds us of scenes of violence. Gericault accumulated his experience of reconstructing the events on the raft into a perfect, deeply thought-out composition of the picture, in which every gesture and every detail is verified. The artist chose the point of view from above, pushing the raft that has risen on the wave to the front edge of the canvas as much as possible - it seems to float out of the plane of the picture, involving the viewer in action. Four dead bodies in the foreground form an arc, pulling the raft into the depths of the sea, to death. Hands, feet, heads are turned down, in this part of the raft the immobility of the dead and the numbness of the living reigns - the father, frozen over the body of the deceased son, and the madman sitting next to him with an empty look.
Sketches by Theodore Géricault for the painting "The Raft of the Medusa"
A heavy sail, which echoes with its bend the wave approaching the raft, the mast, the ropes that fasten it and a group of doubters who still do not believe in the salvation of people, form a compositional "big pyramid", the top of which leans towards the wave, in the direction opposite to the ship. On the right, the "pyramid of hope" rushes upwards with a foundation of exhausted bodies and a peak on which people are grouped trying to attract the ship's attention. We again see the echoing movements of the hands, stretching forward to a barely noticeable point on the horizon. A low cloud duplicates the outlines of a wave absorbing the "big pyramid", but a ray breaks through the clouds, against which the "pyramid of hope" looms.
Composite "pyramids"
In the painting, Gericault feels a deep and respectful knowledge of the classics.
Contrasting lighting with faces and figures snatched from the darkness makes one speak of the influence of Caravaggio, something Rubensian is seen in the dramatic interweaving of living and dead bodies. But most of all, the artist was influenced by his beloved Michelangelo, about the meeting with whose works Gericault wrote: “I trembled, I doubted myself and for a long time could not recover from this experience.” Strong relief modeling, which gives the figures a sculptural quality, high pathos of images, sharp angles - all this refers us to the images of the Sistine Chapel.
Michelangelo Buonarroti. Fragment of the Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican. 1537-1541
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Géricault's contemporaries were struck not by classical perfection, but by unheard-of audacity: the story of a recent shipwreck was suitable for newspaper pages, but not for a large-scale multi-figure picture. On a huge life-size canvas, not the heroes of ancient history or mythology, as was customary according to the canons of neoclassicism, were depicted, but contemporaries, moreover, commoners. In the plot of the picture there was nothing moralizing or sublime, all the norms and concepts of academic art were violated. Few people saw that Gericault elevated the specific story of a shipwreck to a symbol, managed to give it universality, presented it as an eternal confrontation between man and the elements, brought a fresh breath of romanticism into the ordered, strict, static world of neoclassicism - impulse, movement, living feeling.
Eugene Delacroix "Dante's Rook". 1822
The painting is influenced by the work of Theodore Géricault
But the matter was not limited to the aesthetic rejection of the picture. “The raft of the Medusa”, unexpectedly for the author, swam into a sea of political passions. In the picture, contemporaries saw an allegory of France of the Restoration era, mired in corruption and bribery (which was the cause of the tragic outcome of the voyage under the command of an inept, but appointed under the patronage of the captain). Government circles and the official press considered the painter a dangerous rebel, King Louis XVIII himself caustically asked: "This, Monsieur Gericault, is it not a shipwreck in which the artist who created it will drown?" On the contrary, opponents of the regime saw in the picture a damning document. As one of the critics wrote, Gericault "showed all the shame of the French fleet on thirty square meters of the picture." Historian and publicist Jules Michelet summed up the scandal surrounding the painting with the apt phrase: “This is France itself, this is our society loaded on the Medusa raft.”
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Portrait of a crazy woman. 1824
Gericault was dumbfounded by this reception: "An artist, like a jester, must be able to treat with complete indifference to everything that comes from newspapers and magazines." The odious picture was not bought by the state, and the disappointed author went on a tour of England with his canvas, where he showed "The Raft" at paid exhibitions and found a much more favorable reception than at home.
Theodore Géricault. Horse racing at Epsom. 1821
It seemed that The Raft of the Medusa was the first major work of a promising young artist, which, judging by his next works - a series of portraits of the mentally ill and the painting "Epsom Races" painted in England - Géricault had a bright future. The conceived historical painting The Retreat of the French from Russia in 1812 might have dwarfed The Raft of the Medusa, but Théodore Géricault's early masterpiece proved to be his last major work. In January 1824, the artist died after a painful illness, never recovering from an unsuccessful fall from a horse. (Ironically, Captain de Chaumeret, who ruined the Medusa, lived a long but shameful life.)
Theodore Géricault. white horse head
After Theodore Géricault's death, The Raft of the Medusa was put up for auction and purchased by his close friend, the artist Pierre-Joseph Dedreux-Dorcy, for 6,000 francs, while the Louvre was not ready to pay more than 5,000 francs for the painting. Dedreux-Dorcy turned down an offer to sell the work for a large sum in the United States and eventually gave it to the Louvre for the same 6,000 francs on the condition that it be placed in the main exhibition of the museum.
Nicholas Maillot.
"The Raft of the Medusa" in the Louvre. 1831
Illustrations from Wikimedia
In July 1816, near the Cape Verde Islands, the Meduza ship, under the command of an inexperienced captain who received a position under patronage, ran aground. The captain and his entourage sailed away in boats, leaving to the mercy of fate a raft with one hundred and fifty sailors and passengers, of whom only fifteen survived. Excited by this event, the famous representative of romanticism Theodore Gericault decided to create a picture depicting not so much the despair and hope of the shipwrecked, but the cruelty, stupidity and injustice of French society, which, having betrayed the revolution, betrayed the ideals of "Freedom, Equality and Fraternity".
Until recently, friends were surprised at the boldness of his plan and were even ready to dissuade the artist from a daring undertaking. But Theodore was adamant.
Finally understand! - he got excited. “For thirteen days, the unfortunates were rushing on a raft in the ocean.” Of the one hundred and forty-seven people, only fifteen survived. Half-mad and exhausted, they were found among the corpses of their dead comrades. And all this is the fault of the absurd captain, the old monarchist, who was restored to his rights in 1815 after the fall of Napoleon, although he had not sailed for more than twenty years! It was on his orders that the raft with people was abandoned not by fate. No, I will paint a big picture, and you will understand what the cowardice of aristocrats is, so close to the heart of our blessed Louis XVIII ...
The young artist enthusiastically sets to work. In the Monge hospital, he made sketches right at the beds of the sick. But in order to make the creation realistic, you need to know everything that happened on this hellish raft. He meets with Correar, a simple sailor, and Savigny, the second surgeon of the Medusa frigate, who survived a terrible drama. An annoying thought drills into the brain: if they survived, then why? How difficult it is to separate the truth from the lies in a heap of facts, legends, rumors and gossip!
We followed the wake of four ships to bring the new French garrison to Saint-Louis-du-Senegal. Where is it seen, Monsieur Géricault, to lose sight of the ships passing behind? And all Captain Chaumaret. An insignificant and arrogant person, he created an unbearable atmosphere on board the Medusa: an old monarchist emigrant, besides a mediocre sailor, he used any excuse to humiliate the officers. I remember very well how, on the way to Madeira, on the orders of Chaumaret, a little cabin boy was left without help on the high seas, accidentally falling overboard ...
Correard interrupts Savigny:
The captain didn't even know where we were! When the Medusa ran aground on the Argen, he thought the ship was a hundred miles away! People had to leave the frigate, but God, what a mess reigned at the same time! The indecision of the captain was a hundredfold transferred to the rest. Unbelievable when disembarking. Panic gripped the crew, passengers and soldiers. Four hundred people could hardly accommodate themselves in six boats and on the logs of a hastily put together raft. Soldiers fought with rifle butts to take their seats before the passengers. The raft, measuring twenty by seven meters, kept listing to the sides under the weight of one hundred and forty-seven people. At first, the boats took him in tow, but then, without warning, they cut off the ropes ...
Do not miss, rather write down every word! Will he be able to recreate the terrible moment when the numb crowd of the doomed sees how the rope is cut off!
It seems to him that he himself is experiencing the despair of people abandoned to their fate in the open ocean. Occasionally he makes sketches of the face and gestures of Correar.
The artist travels to Le Havre to look at the sea, which he never painted, and is looking for a carpenter from the Medusa there. He brings him to Paris, so that in his workshop he will build exactly the same raft that he once knitted from logs on the banks of Argen. Tightening the knots on hemp cables, the sailor says:
On the first night, twenty people fell into the sea.
Officers?
Oh no, replies the carpenter, grinning grimly. “These gentlemen were in the middle of the raft. The next day, three passengers threw themselves into the water to commit suicide. In the evening, the first rebellion broke out: dissatisfied rebelled against the officers. All night long people fought on the raft, knives, sticks, fists were used.
It is necessary, like tongs, to pull detail after detail from the memory of an eyewitness. One by one, the words of this person draw before the inner eye of the artist someone's gesture or pose.
On the fourth day, there were sixty-three of us left,” the carpenter continues. - Crazed people crawled along the deck and bit each other's legs. Someone was delirious. On the eighth day there were only twenty-seven people on the raft. Marie-Zinaidaida, a Senegalese shopper, died the same evening... and her body...
As if not noticing the carpenter's confusion, Theodore insistently asks:
What did you eat? What did you drink?
There were five barrels of wine. Some tried to drink sea water. As for food...
There is a painful silence. The carpenter is silent about something, and, apparently, for good reason.
When the Argus found you, pieces of meat were drying on ropes. Where did they come from?
Flying fish fell onto the raft. We ate them raw...
But you ate... human corpses!
The sailor lowers his head.
On the eleventh day, an inhuman decision was made. Our wounded ate portions of others. So they were thrown into the sea. Covered with ulcers, drugged by hunger and the sun, we did not understand anything. Finally, on the twelfth day, we saw the sail. Oh, it looked like a mirage. Nobody believed in salvation anymore. And those who still kept even a drop of hope lay in complete exhaustion. Only Jean-Charles, a negro sailor, began to wave his shirt ...
That's how! This poor fellow, despised by all for his black skin, had more presence of mind than the others! Be sure to draw how he calls the rescue ship.
Alas, Argus did not see us. We yelled like catechumens with the last of our strength, waving our arms. Ridiculous: as if ten miles away they could see a miserable shell in the vast expanses of the ocean! People have lost all hope...
Now we need to make the old man remember the position of each of the remaining on the raft, their clothes.
Another crazy night has passed. But Providence must have taken pity on us. The next day, the Argus accidentally spotted us and picked us up...
Gericault already sees the whole scene.
Now just put the sitters in their places and give them the right poses. Negro Joseph, a professional sitter, plays the role of Jean-Charles. Delacroix poses as another sufferer. Géricault writes in a kind of frenzy. He demands absolute silence from everyone and interrupts work only to go to the hospital to make a portrait of the dying man there.
Having gone to visit his son, Gericault meets his friend Lebrun, who is ill with jaundice, and immediately sketches. He needs a special type - gloomy enough to reflect the experiences of a father who has a dead son on his lap ...
In 1819 the two-year work was completed. But before sending the picture to the exhibition, the artist peers again and again at the huge canvas. On the right is a hole in the raft. In one night, an image of a half-naked man immersed in water appears.
And finally, the exhibition. The jury members came to appreciate the unusual creation.
Wrapped in frock coats and shackled with tall tight ties, they do not hide
his indignation.
Why was it necessary to portray this particular muck? Have ancient stories dried up? I would write Caesar, Horace, or something, or Brutus - in a word, something classical, one grumbles.
We cannot agree with the name “The Raft of the Medusa,” concludes the chairman of the jury. - This will cause an unprecedented insult to the honor of the Royal Navy, the authority of the maritime administration. Let him call the picture "Scene of the shipwreck."
Gericault does not mind, because he knows that young people still know the history of the disaster. The catastrophe of Meduza, the mediocrity of its commander, do not leave the lips of the public. At the opening of the salon, people eagerly crowd around the painting by Géricault.
This is an accusation thrown in the face of the regime, journalists say.
The jury classifies Theodore Géricault's painting as class XI. After the salon, she is hung in a corner, away from prying eyes. The state refuses to buy it for the museum, although Géricault, who has been working on it for two years, is in desperate need of money.
Let's show "Medusa" in England, - unexpectedly suggests the English impresario Bullock. - My compatriots are crazy about maritime stories and are always happy to slander the French sailors.
Gericault hopes to be recognized by the English public. He accompanies the painting to London and other cities in England. With joy, he sees the crush at his picture and listens to the comments of experts.
At home, Gericault is in for a surprise: a sensational buzz around his brainchild. Captain de Chaumare is forced to appear before a military court. Lawyers go out of their way to fish out "extenuating circumstances." And now the maritime tribunal sentences the defendant to ... three years in prison. So what if 130 people died because of his cowardice? After all, he is an old honored monarchist, a loyal subject of the king, which are few.
Coming out of prison, Chaumare thinks: “Finally, you can forget everything!” But until the very hour of his death, for another 20 years of his life, he could not leave the house, so that he would not be surrounded by the villagers, shouting insults at the vile coward.
Theodore Géricault - The Raft of the Medusa (detail)
Jean Louis André Theodore Géricault (1791, Rouen - 1824, Paris) was a French painter, the largest representative of European painting of the Romantic era. His paintings, including The Raft of the Medusa, became a new word in painting, although their true significance in the development of fine arts was realized much later. Among researchers there is no single point of view on which direction the artist was a representative of: he is considered the forerunner of romanticism, a realist who was ahead of his time, or one of the followers of David.
"The Raft of the Medusa" (Le Radeau de La Méduse) by Theodore Gericault is one of the most famous paintings of the Romantic era. The reason for the creation of the picture was a sea disaster that occurred on July 2, 1816 off the coast of Senegal with passengers and members of the crew of the frigate "Medusa" who left the ship that had run aground on a raft. Then, on the shallows of Argen, 40 leagues from the African coast, the frigate "Medusa" was wrecked. For the evacuation of passengers, it was planned to use the frigate's boats, which would require two flights. It was supposed to build a raft in order to transfer cargo from the ship to it and thereby contribute to the removal of the ship from the shallows. The raft, 20 meters long and 7 meters wide, was built under the supervision of the geographer Alexander Correar. Meanwhile, the wind began to increase, and a crack formed in the ship's hull. Believing that the ship could break apart, the passengers and crew panicked, and the captain decided to leave it immediately. Seventeen people remained on the frigate, 147 people moved to the raft. The overloaded raft had little provisions and no means of control and navigation.
In the conditions of pre-stormy weather, the crew on the boats soon realized that it was almost impossible to tow a heavy raft; Fearing that the passengers on the raft would start boarding the boats in a panic, the people in the boats cut the tow ropes and headed for the shore. All those who survived on boats, including the captain and the governor, reached the shore separately.
The situation on the raft, left to its fate, turned into a disaster. The survivors were divided into opposing groups - officers and passengers on one side, and sailors and soldiers on the other. On the very first night of the drift, 20 people were killed or committed suicide. During the storm, dozens of people died fighting for the safest place in the center of the mast, where meager supplies of provisions and water were stored, or were washed overboard by a wave. On the fourth day, only 67 people survived, many of them, tormented by hunger, began to eat the corpses of the dead. On the eighth day, the 15 strongest survivors threw the weak and wounded overboard, and then all the weapons so as not to kill each other. The details of the voyage shocked contemporary public opinion. The captain of the frigate, Hugo Duroy de Chaumareil, a former immigrant who had most of the blame for the deaths of the raft's passengers, was appointed under patronage (he was later convicted, received a suspended sentence, but the public was not informed about this). The opposition blamed the government for the incident. The Naval Ministry, seeking to hush up the scandal, tried to prevent the appearance of information about the catastrophe in the press.
In the autumn of 1817, the book "The Death of the Frigate Meduza" was published. Eyewitnesses of the event, Alexandre Corréard and physician Henri Savigny, described in it a thirteen-day wandering of the raft. The book (probably it was already its second edition, in 1818) fell into the hands of Géricault, who saw in history what he had been looking for for many years - a plot for his large canvas. Unlike most of his contemporaries, including his close acquaintances, the artist perceived the drama "Medusa" as a universal, timeless story.
Gericault recreated events through the study of documentary materials available to him and meeting with witnesses, participants in the drama. According to his biographer, Charles Clément, the artist compiled a "dossier of testimonies and documents". He met Corréard and Savigny, talked with them, and probably even painted their portraits. He carefully read their book, perhaps the 1818 edition with lithographs that accurately conveyed the history of the raft's passengers fell into his hands. A carpenter who served on a frigate made a small copy of the raft for Géricault. The artist himself made figures of people from wax and, placing them on a model of a raft, studied the composition from different points of view, perhaps with the help of a camera obscura. Géricault was one of the first among European artists who practiced the development of a pictorial motif in plastic.
Finally, Géricault settled on one of the greatest moments of tension in history: the morning of the last day of the raft's drift, when the few survivors saw the ship Argus on the horizon. Gericault rented a studio that could fit the grandiose canvas he had conceived (his own studio turned out to be insufficient in size), and worked for eight months, almost without leaving the workshop.
Gericault was completely absorbed in his work. Previously, he led an intense social life, but now he did not leave the house and even cut his hair so as not to try to return to his former pastime. Only a few of my friends visited the workshop. He began to write early in the morning, as soon as the light allowed, and worked until evening. Gericault posed for Eugene Delacroix, who also had the opportunity to observe the artist's work on a painting that breaks all the usual ideas about painting. Delacroix later recalled that when he saw the finished painting, he "enthusiastically rushed to run like crazy, and could not stop until the house."
Théodore Géricault - Naked corpse slipping into the water - Besançon - Museum of Fine Arts
(Eugène Delacroix posed for this figure)
The painting was completed in July 1819. In front of the Salon, large canvases were collected in the foyer of the Italian Theatre. Here Gericault saw his work in a new way and decided to immediately redo the lower left part, which seemed to him not convincing enough as a basis for a pyramidal composition. Right in the foyer of the theater, he rewrote it, adding two new figures: a body sliding into the sea (Delacroix posed for him) and a man standing behind a father with a dead son. The two crossbars in the center of the raft were altered, and the raft itself was lengthened on the left - thus giving the impression that people were crowded on that part of the raft that is closer to the viewer.
Théodore Géricault - The Raft of the Medusa
Géricault exhibited "The Raft of the Medusa" at the Salon of 1819, and, as critics noted, it is surprising that this painting was allowed to be shown at all. The Salon of 1819 abounded with works glorifying the monarchy; the main genre on it was historical, allegorical and religious subjects were also widely represented. Religious painting was patronized under a special program and easily bypassed hitherto popular mythological subjects. It is possible that Géricault's painting appeared in the Salon thanks to the efforts of his friends. To reduce the topicality of the canvas, it was exhibited under the title "Scene of the Shipwreck".
Spectators - oppositionists with approval, and royalists with indignation - noted in the picture a political orientation, criticism of the government, through whose fault Meduza passengers died. Someone, like, for example, the author of the pamphlet "Most Remarkable Works Exhibited at the Salon of 1819" by Gault de Saint-Germain, saw the exclusively political orientation of the "Raft of the Medusa".
Some time later, the canvas was shown with varying success in the UK - an exhibition of one painting was organized by entrepreneur William Bullock.
After the death of the artist in 1824, the painting, along with other works and collections of Géricault, was put up for auction. The head of the Department of Fine Arts, Viscount de La Rochefoucauld, who was approached by the director of the Louvre de Forbin with a request to purchase the painting, offered 4-5 thousand francs for it, although it was estimated at 6000. There was a fear that the Raft of the Medusa would be bought by collectors who were going to divide the grandiose canvas into four parts. The painting was purchased by Dedreux-Dorsey for 6,005 francs, acting as an intermediary in the transaction.
In 1825, de Forbin managed to find the right amount, and Gericault's main work took its place in the Louvre.
Currently, "The Raft of the Medusa" is located in the 77th room on the first floor of the Denon Gallery in the Louvre, along with other works of French painting of the Romantic era.
It is characteristic that interest in Gericault's canvas increased during the years of political crises and revolutions. The journalistic pathos of "The Raft of the Medusa" was in demand during the fall of the Second Republic, marking the death of society.
The painting by Jacques Louis David "The Oath of the Horatii" is a turning point in the history of European painting. Stylistically, it still belongs to classicism; it is a style oriented towards Antiquity, and at first glance this orientation is retained by David. The Oath of the Horatii is based on the story of how the Roman patriots, the three brothers Horace, were chosen to fight against the representatives of the hostile city of Alba Longa, the brothers Curiatii. Titus Livius and Diodorus Siculus have this story; Pierre Corneille wrote a tragedy on its plot.
“But it is precisely the oath of the Horatii that is missing from these classical texts.<...>It is David who turns the oath into the central episode of the tragedy. The old man is holding three swords. He stands in the center, he represents the axis of the picture. To his left are three sons merging into one figure, to his right are three women. This picture is amazingly simple. Before David, classicism, for all its orientation towards Raphael and Greece, could not find such a harsh, simple masculine language for expressing civic values. David seemed to hear what Diderot was saying, who did not have time to see this canvas: “You must write as they said in Sparta.”
Ilya Doronchenkov
In the time of David, Antiquity first became tangible through the archaeological discovery of Pompeii. Before him, Antiquity was the sum of the texts of ancient authors - Homer, Virgil and others - and a few dozen or hundreds of imperfectly preserved sculptures. Now it has become tangible, down to furniture and beads.
“But none of that is in David's picture. In it, Antiquity is strikingly reduced not so much to the surroundings (helmets, irregular swords, togas, columns), but to the spirit of primitive furious simplicity.
Ilya Doronchenkov
David carefully staged the appearance of his masterpiece. He painted and exhibited it in Rome, garnering enthusiastic criticism there, and then sent a letter to a French patron. In it, the artist reported that at some point he stopped painting for the king and began to paint it for himself, and, in particular, decided to make it not square, as required for the Paris Salon, but rectangular. As the artist expected, the rumors and the letter fueled public excitement, the painting was booked into an advantageous place at the already opened Salon.
“And so, belatedly, the picture is put into place and stands out as the only one. If it were square, it would be hung in a row of others. And by changing the size, David turned it into a unique one. It was a very powerful artistic gesture. On the one hand, he declared himself as the main one in creating the canvas. On the other hand, he riveted everyone's attention to this picture.
Ilya Doronchenkov
The picture has another important meaning, which makes it a masterpiece for all time:
“This canvas does not appeal to the individual - it refers to the person standing in the ranks. This is a team. And this is a command to a person who first acts and then thinks. David very correctly showed two non-intersecting, absolutely tragically separated worlds - the world of acting men and the world of suffering women. And this juxtaposition - very energetic and beautiful - shows the horror that actually stands behind the story of the Horatii and behind this picture. And since this horror is universal, then the "Oath of the Horatii" will not leave us anywhere.
Ilya Doronchenkov
Abstract
In 1816, the French frigate Medusa was wrecked off the coast of Senegal. 140 passengers left the brig on a raft, but only 15 escaped; they had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive the 12-day wandering on the waves. A scandal erupted in French society; the incompetent captain, a royalist by conviction, was found guilty of the disaster.
“For liberal French society, the catastrophe of the frigate Medusa, the sinking of the ship, which for a Christian person symbolizes the community (first the church, and now the nation), has become a symbol, a very bad sign of the beginning of a new Restoration regime.”
Ilya Doronchenkov
In 1818, the young artist Théodore Géricault, looking for a worthy subject, read the book of the survivors and set to work on his painting. In 1819, the painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon and became a hit, a symbol of romanticism in painting. Géricault quickly abandoned his intention to portray the most seductive scene of cannibalism; he did not show stabbing, despair, or the very moment of salvation.
“Gradually, he chose the only right moment. This is the moment of maximum hope and maximum uncertainty. This is the moment when the people who survived on the raft first see the Argus brig on the horizon, which first passed the raft (he did not notice it).
And only then, going on a collision course, stumbled upon him. On the sketch, where the idea has already been found, “Argus” is noticeable, and in the picture it turns into a small dot on the horizon, disappearing, which attracts the eye, but, as it were, does not exist.”Ilya Doronchenkov
Gericault renounces naturalism: instead of emaciated bodies, he has beautiful courageous athletes in his picture. But this is not idealization, this is universalization: the picture is not about specific Meduza passengers, it is about everyone.
“Géricault scatters the dead in the foreground. He did not invent it: the French youth raved about the dead and wounded bodies. It excited, hit on the nerves, destroyed conventions: a classicist cannot show the ugly and terrible, but we will. But these corpses have another meaning. Look at what is happening in the middle of the picture: there is a storm, there is a funnel into which the eye is drawn. And over the bodies, the viewer, standing right in front of the picture, steps onto this raft. We are all there."
Ilya Doronchenkov
Géricault's painting works in a new way: it is addressed not to an army of spectators, but to every person, everyone is invited to the raft. And the ocean is not just an ocean of lost hopes in 1816. This is the destiny of man.
Abstract
By 1814, France was tired of Napoleon, and the arrival of the Bourbons was received with relief. However, many political freedoms were abolished, the Restoration began, and by the end of the 1820s, the younger generation began to realize the ontological mediocrity of power.
“Eugène Delacroix belonged to that stratum of the French elite that rose under Napoleon and was pushed aside by the Bourbons. Nevertheless, he was favored: he received a gold medal for his first painting at the Salon, Dante's Boat, in 1822. And in 1824, he made the painting “Massacre on Chios”, depicting ethnic cleansing, when the Greek population of the island of Chios was deported and destroyed during the Greek War of Independence. This is the first sign of political liberalism in painting, which touched still very distant countries.
Ilya Doronchenkov
In July 1830, Charles X passed several laws severely restricting political freedoms and sent troops to sack the printing press of an opposition newspaper. But the Parisians responded by shooting, the city was covered with barricades, and during the "Three Glorious Days" the Bourbon regime fell.
The famous painting by Delacroix, dedicated to the revolutionary events of 1830, shows different social strata: a dandy in a top hat, a tramp boy, a worker in a shirt. But the main one, of course, is a beautiful young woman with bare breasts and a shoulder.
“Delacroix succeeds here with something that almost never happens with artists of the 19th century, who are thinking more and more realistically. He manages in one picture - very pathetic, very romantic, very sonorous - to combine reality, physically tangible and brutal (look at the corpses in the foreground beloved by romantics) and symbols. Because this full-blooded woman is, of course, Freedom itself. Political development since the 18th century has made it necessary for artists to visualize what cannot be seen. How can you see freedom? Christian values are conveyed to a person through something very human - through the life of Christ and his suffering. And such political abstractions as freedom, equality, fraternity have no shape. And now Delacroix, perhaps the first and, as it were, not the only one who, in general, successfully coped with this task: we now know what freedom looks like.
Ilya Doronchenkov
One of the political symbols in the painting is the Phrygian cap on the girl's head, a permanent heraldic symbol of democracy. Another talking motif is nakedness.
“Nudity has long been associated with naturalness and nature, and in the 18th century this association was forced. The history of the French Revolution even knows a unique performance, when a naked French theater actress portrayed nature in Notre Dame Cathedral. And nature is freedom, it is naturalness. And that's what, it turns out, this tangible, sensual, attractive woman means. It signifies natural liberty."
Ilya Doronchenkov
Although this painting made Delacroix famous, it was soon removed from view for a long time, and it is clear why. The spectator standing in front of her finds herself in the position of those who are attacked by Freedom, who are attacked by the revolution. It is very uncomfortable to look at the unstoppable movement that will crush you.
Abstract
On May 2, 1808, an anti-Napoleonic rebellion broke out in Madrid, the city was in the hands of the protesters, but by the evening of the 3rd, mass executions of rebels were taking place in the vicinity of the Spanish capital. These events soon led to a guerrilla war that lasted six years. When it is over, two paintings will be commissioned from the painter Francisco Goya to commemorate the uprising. The first is "The uprising of May 2, 1808 in Madrid."
“Goya really depicts the moment the attack began - that first Navajo strike that started the war. It is this compactness of the moment that is extremely important here. He seems to bring the camera closer, from the panorama he moves to an exceptionally close plan, which also did not exist to such an extent before him. There is another exciting thing: the feeling of chaos and stabbing is extremely important here. There is no person here that you feel sorry for. There are victims and there are killers. And these murderers with bloodshot eyes, Spanish patriots, in general, are engaged in butchering.
Ilya Doronchenkov
In the second picture, the characters change places: those who are cut in the first picture, in the second picture, those who cut them are shot. And the moral ambivalence of the street fight is replaced by moral clarity: Goya is on the side of those who rebelled and die.
“The enemies are now divorced. On the right are those who will live. It's a series of people in uniform with guns, exactly the same, even more the same than David's Horace brothers. Their faces are invisible, and their shakos make them look like machines, like robots. These are not human figures. They stand out in a black silhouette in the darkness of the night against the backdrop of a lantern flooding a small clearing.
On the left are those who die. They move, swirl, gesticulate, and for some reason it seems that they are taller than their executioners. Although the main, central character - a Madrid man in orange pants and a white shirt - is on his knees. He is still taller, he is a little on a hillock.
Ilya Doronchenkov
The dying rebel stands in the pose of Christ, and for greater persuasiveness, Goya depicts stigmata on his palms. In addition, the artist makes you go through a difficult experience all the time - look at the last moment before the execution. Finally, Goya changes the understanding of the historical event. Before him, an event was portrayed by its ritual, rhetorical side; in Goya, an event is an instant, a passion, a non-literary cry.
In the first picture of the diptych, it can be seen that the Spaniards are not slaughtering the French: the riders falling under the horse's feet are dressed in Muslim costumes.
The fact is that in the troops of Napoleon there was a detachment of Mamelukes, Egyptian cavalrymen.
“It would seem strange that the artist turns Muslim fighters into a symbol of the French occupation. But this allows Goya to turn a contemporary event into a link in the history of Spain. For any nation that forged its self-consciousness during the Napoleonic Wars, it was extremely important to realize that this war is part of an eternal war for its values. And such a mythological war for the Spanish people was the Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim kingdoms. Thus, Goya, while remaining faithful to documentary, modernity, puts this event in connection with the national myth, forcing us to realize the struggle of 1808 as the eternal struggle of the Spaniards for the national and Christian.
Ilya Doronchenkov
The artist managed to create an iconographic formula of execution. Every time his colleagues - be it Manet, Dix or Picasso - turned to the topic of execution, they followed Goya.
Abstract
The pictorial revolution of the 19th century, even more tangibly than in the event picture, took place in the landscape.
“The landscape completely changes the optics. Man changes his scale, man experiences himself in a different way in the world. A landscape is a realistic depiction of what is around us, with a sense of moisture-laden air and everyday details in which we are immersed. Or it can be a projection of our experiences, and then in the play of a sunset or in a joyful sunny day we see the state of our soul. But there are striking landscapes that belong to both modes. And it's very hard to know, really, which one is dominant."
Ilya Doronchenkov
This duality is clearly manifested by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich: his landscapes both tell us about the nature of the Baltic, and at the same time represent a philosophical statement. There is a lingering sense of melancholy in Friedrich's landscapes; a person rarely penetrates them beyond the background and usually turns his back to the viewer.
In his last painting, Ages of Life, a family is depicted in the foreground: children, parents, an old man. And further, behind the spatial gap - the sunset sky, the sea and sailboats.
“If we look at how this canvas is built, we will see a striking echo between the rhythm of human figures in the foreground and the rhythm of sailboats in the sea. Here are tall figures, here are low figures, here are big sailboats, here are boats under sail. Nature and sailboats - this is what is called the music of the spheres, it is eternal and does not depend on man. The man in the foreground is his finite being. The sea in Friedrich is very often a metaphor for otherness, death. But death for him, a believer, is a promise of eternal life, about which we do not know. These people in the foreground - small, clumsy, not very attractively written - follow the rhythm of a sailboat with their rhythm, as a pianist repeats the music of the spheres. This is our human music, but it all rhymes with the very music that for Friedrich fills nature. Therefore, it seems to me that in this canvas Friedrich promises - not an afterlife paradise, but that our finite being is still in harmony with the universe.
Ilya Doronchenkov
Abstract
After the French Revolution, people realized that they had a past. The 19th century, through the efforts of romantic aesthetes and positivist historians, created the modern idea of history.
“The 19th century created history painting as we know it. Non-distracted Greek and Roman heroes, acting in an ideal environment, guided by ideal motives. The history of the 19th century becomes theatrical and melodramatic, it approaches man, and we are now able to empathize not with great deeds, but with misfortunes and tragedies. Each European nation created its own history in the 19th century, and constructing history, it, in general, created its own portrait and plans for the future. In this sense, European historical painting of the 19th century is terribly interesting to study, although, in my opinion, it did not leave, almost did not leave truly great works. And among these great works, I see one exception, which we Russians can rightly be proud of. This is Vasily Surikov's "Morning of the Streltsy Execution".
Ilya Doronchenkov
19th-century history painting, oriented towards external plausibility, usually tells of a single hero who directs history or fails. Surikov's painting here is a striking exception. Her hero is a crowd in colorful outfits, which takes up almost four-fifths of the picture; because of this, the picture seems to be strikingly disorganized. Behind the live swirling crowd, part of which will soon die, stands the colorful, agitated St. Basil's Cathedral. Behind the frozen Peter, a line of soldiers, a line of gallows - a line of battlements of the Kremlin wall. The picture is held together by the duel of the views of Peter and the red-bearded archer.
“A lot can be said about the conflict between society and the state, the people and the empire. But it seems to me that this thing has some more meanings that make it unique. Vladimir Stasov, a propagandist of the work of the Wanderers and a defender of Russian realism, who wrote a lot of superfluous things about them, spoke very well about Surikov. He called paintings of this kind "choral". Indeed, they lack one hero - they lack one engine. The people are the driving force. But in this picture the role of the people is very clearly visible. Joseph Brodsky in his Nobel lecture perfectly said that the real tragedy is not when the hero dies, but when the choir dies.
Ilya Doronchenkov
Events take place in Surikov's paintings as if against the will of their characters - and in this the concept of the artist's history is obviously close to Tolstoy's.
“Society, people, nation in this picture seem to be divided. Soldiers of Peter in a uniform that seems black, and archers in white are contrasted as good and evil. What connects these two unequal parts of the composition? This is an archer in a white shirt, going to execution, and a soldier in uniform, who supports him by the shoulder. If we mentally remove everything that surrounds them, we will never be able to assume that this person is being led to execution. They are two buddies who are returning home, and one supports the other in a friendly and warm manner. When Petrusha Grinev was hanged by the Pugachevites in The Captain's Daughter, they said: “Don't knock, don't knock,” as if they really wanted to cheer him up. This feeling that a people divided by the will of history is at the same time fraternal and united is the amazing quality of Surikov’s canvas, which I also don’t know anywhere else.”
Ilya Doronchenkov
Abstract
In painting, size matters, but not every subject can be depicted on a large canvas. Different pictorial traditions depicted the villagers, but most often not in huge paintings, but this is precisely the “Funeral at Ornans” by Gustave Courbet. Ornan is a prosperous provincial town, where the artist himself comes from.
“Courbet moved to Paris but did not become part of the artistic establishment. He did not receive an academic education, but he had a powerful hand, a very tenacious eye and great ambition. He always felt like a provincial, and he was best at home, in Ornan. But he lived almost all his life in Paris, fighting with the art that was already dying, fighting with the art that idealizes and talks about the general, about the past, about the beautiful, not noticing the present. Such art, which rather praises, which rather delights, as a rule, finds a very large demand. Courbet was, indeed, a revolutionary in painting, although now this revolutionary nature of him is not very clear to us, because he writes life, he writes prose. The main thing that was revolutionary in him was that he stopped idealizing his nature and began to write it exactly as he sees, or as he believed that he sees.
Ilya Doronchenkov
About fifty people are depicted in a giant picture almost in full growth. All of them are real persons, and experts have identified almost all the participants in the funeral. Courbet painted his countrymen, and they were pleased to get into the picture exactly as they are.
“But when this painting was exhibited in 1851 in Paris, it created a scandal. She went against everything that the Parisian public was used to at that moment. She offended the artists with the lack of a clear composition and rough, dense impasto painting, which conveys the materiality of things, but does not want to be beautiful. She frightened off the ordinary person by the fact that he could not really understand who it was. Striking was the disintegration of communications between the audience of provincial France and the Parisians. The Parisians took the image of this respectable wealthy crowd as the image of the poor. One of the critics said: “Yes, this is a disgrace, but this is the disgrace of the province, and Paris has its own disgrace.” Under the ugliness, in fact, was understood the ultimate truthfulness.
Ilya Doronchenkov
Courbet refused to idealize, which made him a true avant-garde artist of the 19th century. He focuses on French popular prints, and on a Dutch group portrait, and on antique solemnity. Courbet teaches us to perceive modernity in its originality, in its tragedy and in its beauty.
“French salons knew images of hard peasant labor, poor peasants. But the image mode was generally accepted. The peasants needed to be pitied, the peasants needed to be sympathized with. It was a view from above. A person who sympathizes is, by definition, in a priority position. And Courbet deprived his spectator of the possibility of such patronizing empathy. His characters are majestic, monumental, they ignore their viewers, and they do not allow you to establish such a contact with them that makes them part of the familiar world, they break stereotypes very powerfully.
Ilya Doronchenkov
Abstract
The 19th century did not like itself, preferring to look for beauty in something else, be it Antiquity, the Middle Ages or the East. Charles Baudelaire was the first to learn to see the beauty of modernity, and it was embodied in painting by artists whom Baudelaire was not destined to see: for example, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet.
“Manet is a provocateur. Manet is at the same time a brilliant painter, whose charm of colors, colors that are very paradoxically combined, makes the viewer not ask himself obvious questions. If we look closely at his paintings, we will often be forced to admit that we do not understand what brought these people here, what they are doing next to each other, why these objects are connected on the table. The simplest answer is: Manet is primarily a painter, Manet is primarily an eye. He is interested in the combination of colors and textures, and the logical conjugation of objects and people is the tenth thing. Such pictures often confuse the viewer who is looking for content, who is looking for stories. Mane does not tell stories. He could have remained such an amazingly accurate and refined optical apparatus if he had not created his latest masterpiece already in those years when he was possessed by a fatal disease.
Ilya Doronchenkov
The painting "The Bar at the Folies Bergère" was exhibited in 1882, at first earned ridicule from critics, and then was quickly recognized as a masterpiece. Its theme is the cafe-concert, a striking phenomenon of Parisian life in the second half of the century. It seems that Manet vividly and reliably captured the life of the Folies Bergère.
“But when we start to look closely at what Manet did in his picture, we will understand that there are a huge number of inconsistencies that are subconsciously disturbing and, in general, do not receive a clear resolution. The girl that we see is a saleswoman, she must, with her physical attractiveness, make visitors stop, flirt with her and order more drinks. Meanwhile, she does not flirt with us, but looks through us. There are four bottles of champagne on the table, warm, but why not on ice? In mirror image, these bottles are not on the same edge of the table as they are in the foreground. The glass with roses is seen from a different angle from which all the other objects on the table are seen. And the girl in the mirror does not look exactly like the girl who looks at us: she is stouter, she has more rounded shapes, she leaned towards the visitor. In general, she behaves as the one we are looking at should behave.
Ilya Doronchenkov
Feminist criticism drew attention to the fact that the girl with her outlines resembles a bottle of champagne standing on the counter. This is a well-aimed observation, but hardly exhaustive: the melancholy of the picture, the psychological isolation of the heroine oppose a straightforward interpretation.
The painter Théodore Géricault, the founder of romanticism in France, became famous for a number of works and especially for the painting The Raft of the Medusa. She became no less famous than Rembrandt's Night Watch, David's Oath of the Horatii, and Surikov's Boyar Morozova. The artist skillfully expressed in her deep reflections on the fate of people who, by the force of circumstances, were put on the brink of death, he was able to say weighty words about modernity. That is why the historian of the middle of the last century Jules Michelet, recalling the picture, uttered fair words: “I said and repeat again: at that moment Gericault was France.”“These optical plot and psychological riddles of the picture, which seem to have no definite answer, make us approach it again and again each time and ask these questions, subconsciously saturated with that feeling of beautiful, sad, tragic, everyday modern life, which Baudelaire dreamed of and which forever left Manet before us."
Ilya Doronchenkov
In November 1817, shortly after Géricault returned from Italy, the book The Loss of the Frigate Medusa was published in Paris. Its authors narrated about a tragic incident in the ocean. An expedition of four ships was sent to Senegal, carrying soldiers, the new governor of the colony, and officials with their families. During a storm, the escort ships lagged behind the frigate, and off the west coast of Africa, the Medusa ran aground and sank. To save the crew, a raft was built, which was towed by boats to the shore, which was relatively close. However, the crew of the boats, which housed the higher authorities, were frightened by the storm and cut the towing ropes. The raft with 150 sailors and soldiers was thrown into the open ocean. For thirteen days he was carried among the waves, no more than ten people survived. Many died of exhaustion, others were washed away by the waves, some died in the battle for the last food supplies or went crazy. Responsibility for the tragedy fell on the commander of the expedition, who received this appointment under the patronage of the king.
The catastrophe off the coast of Africa attracted wide public attention not only because of the fatal consequences of what happened. The opposition blamed the catastrophe on the political regime of the Restoration, which came after the fall of Napoleon's empire. The conclusion was clear: the Bourbon government patronized the aristocrats, regardless of the interests of the nation. The story of the death of the frigate "Medusa" could not but excite Gericault. His faith in human dignity was offended, and his hatred of the existing regime received yet another confirmation.
One should not think that Gericault only wanted to translate the content of the book into the language of painting. Despite the fact that he knew her almost by heart, she served only as an impetus for a large independent work. Gericault began to look for meetings with the participants in the event who survived. This is how the special method of the artist evolved: the re-creation of the event. Using the power of imagination, re-reading the documents, talking with witnesses, the artist gradually created his own model of the situation, bringing it as close to reality as possible.
Gericault met with the authors of the book "The sinking of the frigate Medusa". The carpenter from the Medusa made, at his request, a smaller copy of the raft. The artist fashioned figures of people from wax and arranged them as if they were real characters in the tragedy. He also goes to the sea coast to paint several sketches with waves and a stormy sky. Finally, he visits the hospital mortuaries of Paris, draws and paints the bodies of the dead, and talks with doctors, learning about the consequences of deprivation, their effect on the human body. All this was necessary for the artist to be truthful in the transmission of the tragic event.
Over a hundred pieces belong to the preparatory period for the creation of the painting "The Raft of the Medusa". Here are quick sketches with a pen, and thoughtfully constructed gouaches, and Picturesque studies, and several sculptural groups. Initially, Gericault was overwhelmed by various ideas, through many trials he comes to the final decision. Least of all the artist was attracted by the depiction of the scene of salvation, because the meaning of the tragedy would have remained unclear with such a decision.
Of great importance was the work on the scenes of the battle on the raft. Perhaps there was a moment when the artist believed that this particular plot would be final. Gericault shows a semi-submerged raft among the raging waves, athletic people are fighting for the best place near the mast with a sail, for drinking water, food. Axes, sabers flash, some break into the water, a group of people is visible either already completely desperate, or turning to the sky with a prayer. But all this does not mean a sad outcome, and therefore the painter refuses this decision.
He is fascinated by a new topic: the expectation of a rescue ship by those who survived. So the compositional searches came to a close. In the tragic history, one moment is highlighted, when everything is still unclear, indefinite. Piles of corpses, scenes of agony, crazy faces, timid hope. Like a miracle, the silhouette of the savior ship appeared on the horizon, and the magical power made several people jump up who still had their mind and will. But whether the ship will notice these unfortunates is hard to say.
The new idea incorporated all the best found at the previous stages of plot development. The artist strives for the ultimate concentration of dramatic action, a variety of feelings that amaze with their complex range. The number of participants is increasing, gestures are becoming more diverse. Géricault clarifies compositional groups, calibrates spatial constructions. Several sketches with oil paints make it possible to clarify the future color scheme of the picture.
It took almost a year to work on it. A huge canvas was prepared in the workshop, about five meters high and seven wide. Secluded from everyone, having locked the workshop for outsiders, Gericault took up the brushes. Only the closest acquaintances and friends were allowed to visit the artist, and even then because many posed for individual figures of the future composition. Among them is the painter E. Delacroix, who after the death of Géricault became the head of romanticism in French art.
Gericault applied to the canvas a drawing of the entire composition, very clear, without details. He painted figure after figure in such a way that it seemed that he had a white wall in front of him, to which fragments of sculptures were mysteriously glued. Such an effect was created by a strong relief modeling. Then came the most crucial moment: the unification of all the fragments into a single whole. In an effort to find a common tone for the figures, the artist made their color darker and darker, so that the bodies appear swarthy and the shadows black. It seems that at the beginning of the work, Gericault did not expect this. Intensifying the contrast of light and dark, he actively used bitumen, which attracted him with a transparent brown tone. However, the paint turned out to be chemically unstable, so that by now the color of the painting has become even colder and darker.
So the job is done. Gericault created a work in which then anyone would recognize the signs of a famous shipwreck. At the same time, he expressed the universal meaning of the tragedy: hope comes to the world of death and despair.
The arrangement of figures in space, almost chaotic at first glance, is deeply thought out. In the foreground "death frieze" of six defeated giants. Their figures are given in full size. The clothes of the dead are torn off, which makes their bodies even more pitiful. The artist shows how terrible death is, which no one notices, no one mourns. The father, who laid his hand on the body of his son, became mad with grief. Around him are those who gave themselves up to despair. A small interval separates the group of the dead and despairing from those who believed in salvation. Their movement originates in the center of the picture, following the compositional diagonal, and ends with the figure of a Negro signalman standing on a barrel. It seems that the raft also rushes in the direction where the eyes of people who are gaining hope are turned. Near the mast, dark silhouettes are those who doubt a happy ending. In the composition, as you can see, there are no main characters, one "hero". The theme of the work is revealed in the richness of pictorial motifs that express the behavior and well-being of everyone. At the same time, they are all one group, a single ensemble.
The color of the picture is almost monochrome. Dull, as if dead colors characterize the images with some kind of ruthless frankness. The bronze torso of a Negro signalman is effectively drawn against the background of a yellowish-silver, brightened sky, turning into a light blue. The water in the distance seems to glow, phosphorescent. Flakes of foam fall on the boards of the raft. Behind the raft, a giant wave rises, ready to plunge those remaining into the abyss of the ocean.
The figures in the picture are executed in the size of nature. So then such major realist artists as G. Courbet in France, V. Surikov in Russia will work. This was to reinforce the impression of the reality of what was happening.
Gericault's work in August 1819 appeared at the next exhibition of the Salon. I had to change its name, and "The Raft of the Medusa" became known as the "Scene of the Shipwreck", although the true plot remained a secret to no one. Critics from different political camps wrote a lot about the picture. Voices denigrating the work were heard from court circles, liberal and opposition circles, on the contrary, exalted it. One of the enthusiastic admirers of the picture, noticing the awards of the Order of the Legion of Honor on the chest of the unfortunate, hinted that only Napoleonic brave men could withstand such a test. But it is characteristic that no one spoke about the skill of the artist, about the merits of the picture as a work of art.
In the Russian magazine "Moscow Telegraph" for 1830, it was correctly written: "... with what contempt Gericault should have looked at these judges, who analyzed his beautiful work as if it were a report on the destruction of the royal frigate Medusa, which followed through the negligence of a watch officer" . In one of the letters, the painter himself described the disappointment that gripped him. "An artist, like a jester, must be able to treat with complete indifference to everything that comes from newspapers and magazines." Nevertheless, Gericault was deeply worried about the fate of his work. At times he fell into a gloomy state of mind. Only the success of the "Medusa Raft" in England, where it was brought after the closing of the Salon, consoled him somewhat.
After Géricault's death in early 1824, his friends ensured that the canvas was transferred to the Louvre. Many artists of later generations learned by looking at him. The work itself, with its drama, innovative compositional solutions, and emotionality, has become one of the most important in the history of French romanticism. Reality, perceived on a historical scale, with the appearance of a contemporary, his feelings, is the main thing in Gericault's picture. In this way she had a decisive influence on the entire development of progressive art in Europe.
