The Laocoon on the Raft of the Medusa
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Neoclassical artists, like the French painter, Theodore Gericault
(1791-1824), used Greek and Roman art as their models and they
made
efforts to represent the classical arts as closely as possible.
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To the Neoclassical interest in
antiquity, Gericault added naturalism and the study of earlier artists
like Michelangelo and Raphael.
His masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa, painted
in1818-1819 and now in the Louvre, shows the ordeal suffered by the
survivors of a French ship called the Medusa, that was wrecked off the
coast of west Africa in 1816, full of Algerian immigrants. A scandal
ensued in France when the tragedy of the shipwreck was mismanaged and
survivors returned to tell of murder, cannibalism, and immense hardship.
Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa
has a political aim, for it is an attack on the government's mishandling
of the incident. Fifteen survivors (and several dead bodies) are
piled upon a raft and are trying to attrack the attention of a passing
ship. Their musculature, as well as their complex and twisted
positions, recall Michelangelo, but also the influence of the Laocoon. Note, in particular,
the central figure with outstretched arms, who assumes a position quite
like that of Laocoon.