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

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CHAPTER 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music 51

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citizens against the French army of occupation. In a puni-
tive measure, the French troops rounded up Spanish sus-
pects in the streets of Madrid, and brutally executed them
in the city outskirts. Goya recreated the episode with imag-
inative force, setting it against a dark sky and an ominous
urban skyline. In the foreground, an off-center lantern
emits a triangular beam of light that illuminates the
Spanish rebels: some lie dead in pools of blood, while oth-
ers cover their faces in fear and horror. Among the victims
is a young man whose arms are flung upward in a final,
Christlike gesture of terror and defiance. Goya deliberately
spotlights this wide-eyed and bewildered figure as he con-
fronts imminent death. On the right, in the shadows, the
hulking executioners are lined up as anonymously as pieces
of artillery. Emphatic contrasts of light and dark and the
theatrical attention to graphic details heighten the inten-
sity of a contemporary political event.
An indictment of butchery in the name of war, The Third
of May, 1808is itself restrainedcompared to “The Disasters
of War,” a series of etchings and aquatintsthat Goya pro-
duced in the years of the French occupation of Spain. “The
Disasters of War” have their source in historical fact as well
as in Goya’s imagination. Brave Deeds Against the Dead
(Figure 29.3) is a shocking record of the inhuman cruelty
of Napoleon’s troops, as well as a reminder that the heroes
of modern warfare are often its innocent victims.

Goya’s French contemporary, Théodore Géricault

(1791–1824), broadened the range of Romantic subjects.

He found inspiration in the restless vitality of untamed

horses and the ravaged faces of the clinically insane. Such

subjects, uncommon in academic art, reflect the Romantic

fascination with the life lying beyond the bounds of reason.

The painting that brought Géricault instant fame wasThe

Raft of the “Medusa.”It immortalized a controversial event

that made headlines in Géricault’s own time: the wreck of

a government frigate called theMedusaand the ghastly fate

of its passengers (Figure 29.4). When the ship hit a reef fifty

miles off the coast of West Africa, the inexperienced cap-

tain, a political appointee, tried ignobly to save himself and

his crew, who filled the few available lifeboats. Over a hun-

dred passengerspiled onto amakeshift raft, which was to be

towed by the lifeboats. Cruelly, the crew set the raft adrift.

With almost no foodand supplies, chancesof survival were

scant; after almost two weeks, in which most died and sev-

eral resorted to cannibalism, the raft was sighted and the

fifteen survivors were rescued.

Géricault (a staunch opponent of the regime that

appointed the captain of theMedusa) was so fired by news-

paper reports of the tragedy that he resolved to immortalize

it in paint. He interviewed the few survivors, made drawings

of the mutilated corpses in the Paris morgue, and even had

a model of the raft constructed in his studio. The result was

Figure 29.2 ANTOINE-JEAN GROS, Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims at Jaffa, 1804. Oil on canvas, 17 ft. 5 in. 23 ft. 7 in.