The Raft of the Medusa

1818–19

Oil on canvas, 491 × 716 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

Survivors of a French navy shipwreck crowd a makeshift raft and strain toward a sail on the horizon. Of about 150 people put on the raft in 1816, fifteen were alive when rescued.

First shown at the Salon of 1819 under the neutral title Scène de naufrage (Shipwreck Scene).
Look at the bodies: they rise in a pyramid from the dead at the front to a man waving a cloth.
Begun in a rented Paris studio in 1818 and finished in a theater foyer in July 1819.
No king, saint or general appears: a recent disaster and its anonymous victims are given the size of history painting, the most prestigious kind of art.
Shown to paying crowds in London and Dublin in 1820–21, then bought for the Crown at his estate sale in 1824.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)