The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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52 CHAPTER 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music

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enormous, both in size (the canvas measures

16 feet 1 inch23 feet 6 inches) and in dra-

matic impact. In the decade immediately

preceding the invention of photography,

Géricault provided the public with a power-

ful visual record of a sensational contempo-

rary event. He organized the composition on

the basis of a double triangle: one triangle is

formed by the two lines that stay the mast

and is bisected by the mast itself, the other

by the mass of agitated figures, culminating

in the magnificently painted torso of a black

man who signals the distant vessel that will

make the rescue. Sharp diagonals, vivid con-

trasts of light and dark (reminiscent of

Caravaggio), and muscular nudes (inspired

by Michelangelo and Rubens) heighten the

dramatic impact of the piece.

Géricault’sRaftelevated ordinary men to the position of

heroic combatants in the eternal struggle against the forces

of nature. It celebrated their collective heroism in con-

fronting deadly danger, a theme equally popular in Romantic

literature, and, as with Turner’sSlave Shipand Goya’sThird

of May, it publicly protested an aspect of contemporary

political injustice. In essence, it brought together the reali-

ty of a man-made disaster and the more abstract theme of

the Romantic sublime: the terror experienced by ordinary

human beings in the face of nature’s overpowering might.

Figure 29.3 FRANCISCO GOYA, Brave Deeds Against the Dead, from the

“Disasters of War” series, ca. 1814. Etching, 6  81 ⁄ 4 in. Goya himself wrote

the biting captions for these etchings. Because some of the prints satirized

the Church and other bastions of authority, they were not published until

thirty-five years after the artist’s death.

Figure 29.4 THÉODORE GÉRICAULT, The Raft of the “Medusa,”1818. Oil

on canvas, 16 ft. 1 in. 23 ft. 6 in. Much like the panoramic landscapes of

Frederic Church, Géricault’s painting became an object of popular display

and entertainment. Exhibited in London, it drew some 40,000 visitors

between June and December 1820.