Book Description

The Raft of the Medusa is a novel based on the life of Théodore Géricault, the great 19th Century French Romantic painter, and on the historical events surrounding one of the most scandalous disasters in French naval history. In particular, the book focuses on Géricault's creation of his celebrated masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa, and on his passionate and tragic love affair with his aunt. As author Robert M. Hertzberg states in a note that precedes the main text, his book is a novel, not history or biography, but he has made extensive use of historical and biographical sources. He has remained faithful to the facts so far as they are known but has taken the novelist's liberty to interpret those facts, to provide motives, and to imagine states of mind; but never, in matters of substance, has he strayed from the realm of possibility, nor, to his knowledge, invented anything that might not plausibly have been the case. After a Prologue that sets the scene of Géricault's Paris studio where The Raft of the Medusa is being painted, the reader is transported to the present-day Louvre gallery where the picture is seen today. The painting is described, its place in the course of France's art is defined, and its changing impact on critics and the public is noted. The reader is introduced to the sculptor who created Géricault's tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris; he has received an unexpected bequest from one Georges-Hippolyte, whom he recalls meeting years before and who is revealed as the son, born in virtual secrecy to Géricault and the wife of his brother. Thus we learn of the central and bitter secret of a turbulent life lived in a turbulent time. Born in Rouen in 1791 to a wealthy couple, young Théodore grows up as a sensitive, introspective, and restless country-loving boy, most at home on the peaceful family estate, carefully shielded from the rigors and violence of life in France that have accompanied the replacement of the royal House of Bourbon by Revolution and creation of the First Republic. Moving to Paris at the age of five, Géricault is now introduced to more formal education, as well as to the joys of horseback riding, which will play a vital part in his life and work. His teenage years are filled with more than school and riding he discovers a talent for drawing, leading to painting, which becomes a dedication. Admitted to the studios of conservative Classical painters, he revels in the company of fellow-students and exploits his rebellious tendencies to push himself beyond the practices of traditional academic expression. He advances beyond his teachers, the .painters Carle Vernet and Pierre Guérin, and studies on his own in the Musée Napoleon. By 1812, when Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia precipitates the invasion of France by British and Prussian allies, Géricault enlists in the Gray Musketeers in a futile gesture of loyalty to Napoleon's ill-fated Bourbon successor, Louis XVIII. However, Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815 leaves Géricault with little to occupy him except his increasing concentration on his painting. His style is moving ever faster away from the Classical mode still favored by most of his contemporaries. Dramatic paintings, military and equine portraits, battle scenes, somber landscapes, notebook after notebook of vivid, often roughly sketched drawings all flow from his ever-more Romantic hand. He is becoming noticed, with both esteem and alarm. Meanwhile, he has fallen deeply in love with his aunt, the young wife of his aging uncle. The situation is agonizing; he is torn apart. Travel to Italy becomes a way of avoiding the passion and frustration within him. About this time, in July 1816, a shipwreck has occurred, for awhile little noted: a French frigate, the "Medusa," sailing from Southern France to Senegal in West Africa has run aground just off the coast of Africa and has been a