Flayed Cadavers: Study for Raft of the Medusa,

1818

Géricault worked for two years on his masterpiece The Raft of Medusa, an enormous canvas depicting the scandalous wreck of the French frigate, Méduse, grounded through navigational incompetence in shallow water off the coast of West Africa in July 1816. Of the 146 passengers and crew cast adrift on a rudderless, makeshift raft, all but fifteen perished from starvation, suicide, and murder before the survivors were rescued by a passing ship thirteen days later. Gericault’s graphic depiction of the dead and dying victims created a sensation when the painting was presented at the Salon of 1819, and today it is considered a towering icon of French Romantic art. The composition featured larger-than-life nude figures, derived from innumerable studies—such as this drawing of two cadavers—drawn in a hospital morgue.