Géricault chose to depict this event in order to launch his career with a large-scale uncommissioned work on a subject that had already generated great public interest. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain. On 5 July 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practised cannibalism. At 491 cm × 716 cm (16' 1" × 23' 6"), it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on 2 July 1816.
Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. The Raft of the Medusa ( French : Le Radeau de la Méduse ) is an oil painting of 1818–1819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791–1824).
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