In 1816 the French frigate *Méduse*, en route to Senegal, ran aground off the coast of Mauritania. With too few lifeboats, 150 people were cast onto a hastily built raft. When it was found thirteen days later, only fifteen remained alive — most had died, and the survivors had resorted to cannibalism. The scandal struck directly at the restored monarchy, which had appointed the unfit captain. The 27-year-old painter Théodore Géricault decided to bring the political wound onto canvas.

Géricault researched the event with documentary rigour: he took testimony from survivors, set up in his studio a model of the raft built by the original carpenter, and even procured body parts from the morgue to observe the colour of decomposition. The result is a 716 × 491 cm canvas capturing the moment when the survivors glimpse the smoke of a distant ship on the horizon.

The composition is built on two rising triangles — from the heap of the dead to the tower-like sway of the living. The figure at the apex is a black sailor (Jean Charles), standing on the bodies of the dead and signalling for help. The detail was deliberate: Géricault that same year exhibited pamphlets for the abolition of slavery.

When first shown at the 1819 Salon, the official reception was hostile; a year later in London the painting was a popular success. It entered the Louvre collection in 1824. It is the first major painting that abandons academic decorum to look at a current event, ordinary people, and real suffering — Romanticism from this point on is also political.