AU COEUR DE L'HISTOIRE : Le Radeau de la Méduse, la vraie histoire derrière le tableau

The famous painting displayed at the Louvre depicts shipwrecked castaways adrift: some are dead, others devastated by helplessness, while a human pyramid forms at the bow topped by a Black man. In the distance, the tiny silhouette of a ship appears.

The scene captures the particular moment when hope is reborn in the castaways' hearts, with twilight and ochre light that accentuates the pallor and putrefaction marks of the corpses.

• Crowds and art critics flock to the Louvre in 1819 to admire the immense canvas • It is the masterpiece of the Salon, the grand annual event of the greatest living painters • The public shares a fascination with the macabre, captivated by this shipwreck scene

Art critics are less enthusiastic than the general public, finding the subject insufficiently classical and detecting an underlying critique of the restored monarchy.

In 1816, Théodore Géricault stays in Italy at age 25. He has already been recognized at the 1812 Salon for his Officer of the Imperial Guard Cavalry, celebrating the heroism of Napoleonic armies.

• Struck by Michelangelo's Mannerist works during the Italian Renaissance • Studied muscular male bodies, complex interpretation of Hellenistic period works • The pinnacle of Antique art influencing his composition

In 1816, Géricault fails to win the Prix de Rome, which rewards the year's best artists. Vexed, he seeks a grand new subject—grandiose, shocking, symbolic, and Romantic—that would show the world what a great painter he is.

By choosing a subject rooted in current events, Géricault renews grand historical painting, the genre in which all worthy painters must excel, infusing it with Romantic spirit.

On June 17, 1816, four ships leave the island of Aix: the Medusa, the Loire, the Echo, and the Argus, under the command of Captain Hugues de Chaumaret. The fleet carries soldiers and passengers bound for Senegal, ceded back to France by the Treaty of Paris.

• Captain Chaumaret has not navigated for 25 years, having fled to England during the French Revolution • He fought in battles with foreign royalists against revolutionary France • Considered an enemy of the Republic, he is reinstated through the 1815 monarchy restoration • Officers distrust him and near mutiny over his decisions

Chaumaret allows his four ships to separate. The Medusa finds itself alone navigating dangerous waters, the Arguin Bank with its shifting sandbars. The ship runs aground on a sandbar.

• The crew builds a raft from planks to store heavy cargo • The maneuver fails and the Medusa takes on water • The six lifeboats cannot accommodate nearly 400 souls aboard • 150 sailors, soldiers, and a canteen woman are crammed onto a raft never designed for passengers

• The raft called the machine is too heavy and sinks in the water, passengers submerged up to their waists • Ballast and cargo barrels are thrown overboard to lighten the vessel • Only meager wine, fresh water, and hardtack reduced to mush remain • The lifeboats cut the lines tying them to the raft, abandoning it in open water

The survivors fight to throw some of their own overboard to lighten the load. After a series of mutinies, only 15 survive, their skin burned by the sun and their feet rotted by saltwater.

Starving and thirsting to the brink of madness, the 15 survivors resort to the unspeakable: eating the flesh of their dead, a salvage meat dried in the sun for 12 days of hell.

• The Argus, one of the fleet's ships, is sent to find the Medusa and recover gold from its hold • The ship initially passes at a distance without spotting the raft • On a second pass, it finally sees the machine with its 15 living dead • Five survivors die in the following days; among the survivors are geographer Coréas and surgeon Savigny

When Théodore Géricault reads the account of this tragedy, he is astounded. He sees everything he seeks: a historical drama in the form of current events, the consequences of an incompetent man's nepotism, a critique of the restoration, and an allegory of France torn between Empire and monarchy.

• Géricault meets survivors Coréas and Savigny who introduce him to Thomas, the Medusa's carpenter • He reconstructs a scale model of the raft on which he moves wax figurines • He asks hospital doctors for cadaver parts stolen from the morgue to observe and sketch • He observes the dying at the hospital with a sketchbook to capture death's final grimaces

Géricault summons models, often poor, to his studio to pose for hours in exchange for three francs. Among them is Joseph le, a circus acrobat from Haiti and former slave, built like a Greek god, who befriends the painter, who favors abolition.

• France abolished slavery by a Convention decree in 1794 during the French Revolution • Napoleon restores slavery in the colonies in 1802 amid property owners' demands • Measures against slave trade and for abolition gain ground in public opinion • Géricault gives Joseph le prominence in his painting to demonstrate his abolitionist commitment

• The survivors in the background form a dynamic pyramid like a wave rising from the lower left to the upper right • On the left at the stern, the corpses symbolize those facing the past who have lost hope • The stoic figure of the cloaked man in red embodies one who surrenders • On the right, the castaways facing the future spot the Argus, the salvation ship

At the summit of the human pyramid, a Black man whom Joseph le modeled for symbolically embodies faith in the end of slavery in a France hoping to emerge from crisis.

Despite his concern for realism, Géricault paints the bodies in the manner of Italian Mannerists. Light carves the hard, tense muscles sharply, creating a striking result.

• The painting was acquired by the State and is located in room 700 of the Louvre, in the Denon wing devoted to French school art • Ironically, it belongs to the collection of Charles X, the Restoration's second sovereign • The Raft of the Medusa is today an inalienable masterpiece of our Republic displayed in the same Salon Carré where it first hung