Géricault and the Raft of the Medusa (Part 2)

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class
Episode: Géricault and the Raft of the Medusa (Part 2)
Hosts: Holly Fry & Tracy V. Wilson
Original Air Date: September 24, 2025

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Overview

This episode concludes a two-part deep dive into the aftermath of the 1816 French naval disaster of the frigate Méduse, focusing on the public and political fallout, and how the tragedy inspired artist Théodore Géricault’s monumental painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Hosts Holly and Tracy discuss the survivor accounts, the official responses, the court martial, and Géricault’s personal and artistic journey in creating one of the most shocking and influential works of French Romanticism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Aftermath of the Méduse Shipwreck

(Starts ~02:43)

• Survivors Dr. Henri Savigny (surgeon) and Alexandre Corréard (engineer) were among the ten who survived 13 horrific days on a makeshift raft, abandoned by the captain and most of the officers.
• Their detailed accounts laid blame squarely on Captain Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, citing failures of leadership and duty.
• Official reports were subject to political manipulation: “Henri Sevigny returned to Paris to deliver the report to the Naval Ministry. But his report leaked to the papers...there was political maneuvering going on that wanted to use this report to damage the existing government.” – Tracy (05:00)
• Governor Schmaltz pressured Corréard to sign an inaccurate report, which he refused, even while hospitalized (06:00–06:51).

2. The Public Outcry and Court Martial

(07:23–13:14)

• Details of the raft ordeal, including the horror of cannibalism and the abandonment of the dying, became public knowledge with the release and wide translation of the survivors' book.
• Alternative narratives attempted to shift blame, but survivor accounts were widely accepted.
• Captain Chaumareys faced court martial in 1817:
  • Seemed unfazed and in denial of his guilt: “He was acting really weird and being like, remember how that happened? That I was trying to do the right thing.” – Tracy (07:23)
  • Ultimately received a lenient sentence: banned from the navy, stripped of honors and pension, financial penalties, and three years in prison (12:25–12:51).
  • Public and survivors felt the sentence didn’t match the scale of suffering and loss (13:14).

3. The Narrative’s Impact and Rise of Géricault’s Obsession

(13:52–18:18)

• The Méduse disaster gripped the French public, horrifying and fascinating all—especially young artist Théodore Géricault, who saw in it a potent indictment of post-Napoleonic French ineffectuality.
• Brief biographical portrait of Géricault:
  • Born in 1791 in Rouen, France, originally studied literature but pursued painting due to a lifelong love of horses (16:38–18:18).
  • Early life was marked by scandal: an affair with his young aunt-by-marriage Alexandrine, resulting in a child later surrendered to the state (18:18–25:00).

4. Géricault’s Artistic Evolution and Preparation

(19:30–25:00)

• Trained with prominent painters but developed a reputation for intense, unorthodox techniques (20:55).
• Notable early works depicted soldiers and horses in unheroic light, earning mixed reception for their implicit criticism of war (20:55–22:51).
• Disillusioned after a controversial salon debut, Géricault briefly served in the military, perhaps as a distraction (22:51–23:23).
• Travel and studies in Italy deepened his technique; only the Méduse story could draw him away from these pursuits (23:23–25:00).

5. Creating ‘The Raft of the Medusa’

(25:00–39:07)

• Seeking accuracy, Géricault consulted survivors Corréard and Savigny for firsthand details and even constructed a model raft (25:00–26:27).
  • “Jericho invited Alexandre Corrid and Henri Savigny to his studio to tell him personally about their experiences, and he worked with these two survivors to create a meticulously rendered illustration of the raft…” – Tracy (25:00)
• For realism, Géricault studied human decomposition in morgues, becoming fixated on copying decaying flesh, even keeping severed limbs in his studio (31:08–31:35).
  • “In some cases, the artist was able to get body parts from deceased persons and take them back to his studio...He even made daily images of the same limb decaying day after day…” – Holly (31:08)
• Painted Corréard and Savigny into the scene; refined the work up to and even after its installation at the Salon (31:35–32:38).

6. Reception and Legacy of the Painting

(32:38–40:56)

• The 16x23-foot painting was celebrated for its technical brilliance but criticized for depicting contemporary tragedy so graphically.
  • “It did win a gold medal, but no title, which was unusual. Some critics criticized Jericho for selecting the shipwreck as subject matter.” – Holly (33:46)
• English audiences responded with greater enthusiasm, seeing it as evidence of French incompetence (36:26).
• Géricault died young (age 32, 1824), without seeing the true impact of his masterpiece.

7. Géricault’s Later Work and the Mystery of the ‘Insane’ Portraits

(39:07–44:37)

• His late career included a haunting series: ‘Les Monomanes’ (Portraits of the Insane), painted under the influence of progressive psychiatrist Etienne Georget.
• Only five of the original ten are confidently identified; recent years (2021–2024) have seen the possible rediscovery of others, though attribution remains disputed.

8. The Fates of Key Figures

(40:56–41:58)

• Captain Chaumareys died in poverty ~1841.
• Corréard became a publisher and political agitator, died 1857.
• Savigny (survivor and author), dogged by blame, withdrew from public life, died 1843.
• The Raft of the Medusa remains in the Louvre, its impact undiminished.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “All of this obsessive behavior was tied to the desire to once again become the darling of the Paris Salon.” – Tracy (31:35)
• “It is a study of a pile of severed limbs.” – Holly, on Géricault’s Anatomical Fragments (31:08)
• “He was acting really weird and being like, remember how that happened? That I was trying to do the right thing.” – Tracy, on Captain Chaumareys’ denial (07:23)
• “This is like the worst work stories of today, where, like, somebody’s in the hospital… and their boss is like, I need you to sign this today, but it’s not true.” – Holly (06:28)
• “This was all rebellious on Jericho’s part, because this was essentially a painting that criticized war.” – Tracy (21:41)
• “We make no farther remarks. The public will judge of his account and ours.” – Savigny & Corréard, quoted in translation about rival narratives (10:50)
• “Everything indicates that it would have been obvious to his uncle that they had been having an affair.” – Tracy, on the Géricault family scandal (25:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:43] Main episode starts; recap and shipwreck aftermath
• [04:00] Survivor reports and political scandal
• [05:37] Official investigations and pressure to change testimony
• [07:23] The return to France and captain’s denial
• [11:26] Court martial proceedings and sentencing
• [13:52] Géricault’s obsession begins
• [16:38] Géricault’s early life and influences
• [20:55] First major paintings and their reception
• [23:23] Military service and Italian studies
• [25:00] Géricault’s pivot to the Medusa project
• [31:08] Study of decomposition and studio practices
• [32:38] Completion, exhibition, and critical reaction
• [36:26] The painting’s enthusiastic English reception
• [39:07] Portraits of the insane and their mystique
• [40:56] Fates of Chaumareys, Corréard, Savigny
• [41:32] The mystery of the lost portraits and ongoing discoveries

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Conclusion

This episode expertly navigates how the tragedy of the Méduse resonated through French society and art, inspiring not only a pivotal social reckoning but the creation of one of the most dramatic and influential paintings in art history. Holly and Tracy’s narrative weaves together survival horror, political intrigue, art criticism, and Géricault’s haunted genius, making clear the power of image and story to shape how we understand catastrophe—and hold the powerful accountable.

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(Listener mail and outro omitted. Ads and non-content sections skipped as requested.)

Transcript

[Holly Fry]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

[Holly Fry]

I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is part two of a two parter we have going on right now. In part one, we talked about the mission of the French frigate La Meduse, which we have been calling by the Anglicized name Medusa and several other vessels to re establish the French as the rulers of the European colony in Senegal, and how that journey turned harrowing due to poor leadership and desperate circumstances. And today we're going to talk about the aftermath of the shipwreck and the artist who became obsessed with it. This is going to reference details from the first part that we're not going to rehash in a lot of extra coverage. So it's definitely a situation where if you have not heard that first one, you should go back. And also like last time, unfortunately, sorry, I guess we can call this an on ramp to Halloween. But there is some grisly stuff in this one as well. Not just related to the shipwreck, perhaps in a way you might find surprises.

[Holly Fry]

So one of the surgeons aboard the Medusa, Henri Savigny, and a geographical engineer named Alexandre Corriar were among the 10 men who survived the 13 days of just terror aboard the raft that had been constructed on the fly out of the Medusa's timbers to try to hold the people who would not fit on the ship's lifeboats. They and other members of the ship's crew prepared reports regarding what had happened both leading up to and after the Medusa was run up on a reef and unable to be floated again. These reports outlined the many failings of the incompetent Captain Chamoret, as well as his absolute lack of adherence to duty and leaving many of his men behind on the frigate as he just sailed off in one of the lifeboats.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Though the shipwreck had happened in early July, news of it didn't reach French papers until September, though even those reports were initially very sparse on details. As the news spread and questions started being asked, Henri Sevigny returned to Paris to deliver the report to the Naval Ministry. But his report leaked to the papers and there was actually for a while, suspicion that he had sold the story himself. He had not. There was political maneuvering going on that wanted to use this report to damage the existing government. And that's how it got there. But the editor of the newspaper that ran the story actually had to sign a statement that he had not gotten this information from the surgeon.

[Holly Fry]

An inquiry into the events of the Medusa opened on September 17, 1816. Next it went to a commission for a deep dive into all of the evidence which found clear evidence of negligence on the part of the captain of the Meusa.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Julian Desiree Schmals, the appointed French governor of Senegal, who was part of all of this, had his own report, and he wanted Alexandre Corridor to sign it. And his version claimed that the tow ropes from the lifeboats to the raft had broken rather than being cut or let go. And the engineer would not sign these because that was frankly not the truth. But he was harangued by Schmaltz's office for his signature, despite the fact that this was going on while Corriar was still in the hospital recovering from his time on the raft.

[Holly Fry]

I'm just. This is just like the worst work stories of today, where, like, somebody's in the hospital recovering from a surgery and their boss is like, I need you to sign this today, but it's not true.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I need you to sign this today. Maybe in your weakened state you'll agree with my version of events.

[Holly Fry]

At the beginning of December, Corriar was well enough to travel back to France, and he traveled on the Loire, which had been part of the group that was with the Medusa on its tragic summer voyage. A number of other survivors of the Medusa were there too, including Chamoret. Chamoret, according to Corriere and others aboard the Loire, seemed to believe that he had done nothing wrong and that he would be cleared of any charges against him. The captain, in fact, blamed the governor.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, he kind of knew a court martial was coming, and he was apparently preparing for his defense for that. And almost the way someone is trying to convince themselves of a thing by convincing others. He was acting really weird and being like, remember how that happened? That I was trying to do the right thing.

[Holly Fry]

Just completely remember how I absolutely knew what I was doing and listened to the advice of the people who knew what they were doing. Yeah, he.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That's not true. That journey back to France was really rough for Corriar, and not just because he was having to travel with the captain that had caused his misery. He was not fully recovered. Physically, he was well enough to travel, but he was not 100%. And mentally, he was not there at all. He was not at ease being back at sea. His early days, when he was on a smaller boat that was taking him out to the Loire, it sounds like he had a very rough time and was so agitated and anxious that he was physically ill. But when the Loire reached France at the port of Rochefort, Corriard was actually hospitalized there and While he was there, the ship surgeon Henri Savigny often visited him, and the two men shared the details of what had been happening in their respective locations over the previous months, and they started to collaborate on a definitive and detailed account of the entire voyage wreck and raft experience.

[Holly Fry]

That account was narrative of a voyage to Senegal in 1816, undertaken by order of the French government, comprising an account of the sufferings of the crew and the various occurrences on board the raft in the desert of zara and at St. Louis and the camp of Decord, to which are subjoined observations respecting the agriculture of the western coast of Africa from Cape Blanco to the mouth of the Gambia. This book was explosive. It gave everyone in France a detailed, moment by moment account of what had transpired and how quickly the raft had turned into a nightmare once it was cut loose. The entire world was in my mind unsurprisingly eager to hear this story, and soon it was translated into multiple languages to meet that demand.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Interestingly, Antoine Riche Fort, he was the man who had been given a great deal of power by Captain Chaumerray in navigation the ship, even though he had no real qualifications, was writing his own counter narrative, presumably hoping to pass off any responsibility for the tragedy. And Savigny and Couriard actually noted this upcoming work in their book, stating in the preface to the second edition quote, at the moment that we publish a second edition of our narrative, we learn that Mr. Sevigny is going to publish a pretended account by Mr. Richefort, an auxiliary ex officer of the French Marine. Our readers will not have forgotten a certain pretended sea officer who was partly the cause of our misfortunes and who, when on board the Medusa, gave such unhappy advice to the captain, who still more unhappily followed it too closely. Well, this ex officer, this fatal auxiliary who conducted the frigate upon the bank of arguing is no other than Mr. Riche Fort. Having gone on board the governor's boat, he remained a stranger to the disasters which he had partly caused and consequently knew nothing of of what passed either upon the raft or on board the boats which stranded or in the desert. We make no farther remarks. The public will judge of his account and ours. I never actually found any information of this account that was to be published by Richev. So I don't know if it went forward or if that plan was abandoned, or if I just couldn't find it because it's so rare.

[Holly Fry]

The story traveled well beyond France, though it doesn't appear to have hit papers in the US until November. The details of the 13 days on the raft, even including the harrowing decision to throw the dying off the raft to preserve provisions, were all recounted.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hugues du Roy de Chamaret faced a court martial that began in January 1817. Although there were almost two dozen witnesses, this wasn't a scenario where testimony was particularly revelatory or explosive. All of the details had already become public knowledge, so this was kind of just a matter of seeing what consequences Shamarine might face. And Shamure did not help his own case. When he was called to the stand, he didn't even give his age correctly. He was off by three years. He also tried to pass blame to anyone and anything but himself, citing, among other things, the haste with which he was told to get to Senegal as part of the reason things went wrong. He also claimed that he was begged to command a lifeboat, which was not true. He just left. He claimed that he felt the decisions that he was making throughout this ordeal were for the safety of the people aboard the ship and that they were all selfless.

[Holly Fry]

Though Shamar was obviously at fault for a great portion of the Medusa tragedy, he got off pretty easily. He was banned from naval service, stripped of all prior military honors in his pension, required to pay all the expenses of the court martial, and sentenced to three years in prison. I'm just going to say banning him from the naval service when he had not been at sea in, like, two.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Decades and he was like retirement age anyway.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, the rest of that may be somewhat more impactful, but, like, three years did not seem like nearly enough to a lot of his countrymen, given how many lives had been lost through his negligence. Survivors of the ordeal felt that the Ministry of the Navy had downplayed the whole thing to prevent political fallout for the monarchy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yes. So if you were wondering in part one why we read some of the incredibly grisly passages, we did, this is part of why I wanted our listeners to understand, really how light this sentence is, given what people endured and the trauma that they lived through, in addition to the people that died. As the news of the Medusa and the story of Alexandre Corriere and Henri Sevigny spread throughout France, it seemed that literally everyone in the country was fascinated and horrified by it, understandably. But one person in particular, an artist named Teodor Jericho, became completely transfixed by the story.

[Holly Fry]

We'll talk about Jericho's life after we pause for a sponsor break.

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Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos. But now the old gays pull back the curtain on their brand new podcast, Silver Linings with the Old Gays. Brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare. With over 300 years of experience. Between them, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve four lifetimes of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the Gay Agenda. Listen in to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics, from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine. Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Theodore Jerico was born on September 26, 1791 in Rouen, France. He was the son of a lawyer. We don't have a whole lot of information about his early life, although we do know that his parents sent him to school to study classical literature, which he abandoned to focus on painting. One of the primary drivers for Jericho's interest in art was his passion for horses. He had loved horses since he was a tiny boy, and as he grew up he wanted his life's work to be painting them.

[Holly Fry]

Additionally, Jericho had a scandal in his early life. When he was 16, his uncle, who was in his early 50s, married a much younger woman that was 22 year old Alexandrine Modeste de Saint Martin, and these two young people became friends. She was interested in art, so they had a natural affinity. In 1808 Jericho's mother, who also supported his hopes for an artistic career, died. Although Theodore was financially set due to an inheritance from his mother, he was still beholden to his father's wishes for his future. Alexandrine became his primary supporter. This went beyond encouragement. She got her husband to hire him and do his business, which was tobacco. But that was something of a ruse because Jericho was rarely at work and he was instead getting lessons in art and horseback riding. But his uncle, Jean Baptiste Carrel, was repaid for this kindness with a betrayal. It's kind of unsurprising to me, which is that Jericho fell in love with Alexandrine and the two of them started having an affair, which went on for quite some time.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Jericho says this of his painting teachers quote In 1808 he entered the studio of Charles Vernet, from which in 1910 he passed to that of Guerin, whom he drove to despair by his passion for Rubens and by the unorthodox manner in which he persisted in interpreting nature. So it sounds like Jericho was Kind of intense and explosive in a number of ways, outside of his preferences in artists. After a number of issues with guards and museum leadership, he was outright banned from the Louvre after he hit a student who was visiting there. I could never quite suss out what the disagreement had been between these two men, but Jericho was willing to throw hands in a museum is what I'm saying.

[Holly Fry]

Jericho's first major work to be displayed publicly translates to Officer of the Mounted Hunters of the Imperial guard charging. This 1812 painting is nearly 11ft tall and depicts, as its name indicates, a military officer on a horse. The charging part of the title is a little misleading. The horse may be running forward, but it looks as if it's rearing and trying to turn away from the direction it's pointed. Similarly, the officer is turned at kind of an awkward angle towards something behind him, brandishing his sword.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I will say, if this is your first public display of a piece of art, I think for most people, it would knock their socks off. It's like, oh, this is like an amateur's first foray into professional work. Whether you love the subject matter or not, it's beautifully executed, and it is enormous. So it's very impressive. And two years after that first painting, Jericho exhibited another painting of a soldier with a horse. In this piece, titled Cuirassier Blesser quitant le feu, or Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Fire. Fire is sometimes translated as battle. He is walking away from whatever it is he's been involved in. But unlike the previous painting, this soldier is not riding his horse. He is walking alongside it and holding it by the reins. The horse has a look about him that many people have perceived as uncertain. And the soldier is looking back over his shoulder to the dark area that they are leaving. And this image is really pretty benign to modern eyes, but it was very controversial in 1814. For one, it depicted a soldier in a way that was not heroic in the least. He appears to have been defeated, which is not great. And the painting was also quite dark. There was nothing glorious about it. And while the title mentions the soldier as wounded, there are no obvious wounds on him, leading to the interpretation by some that his wounds are emotional, either because his ego was bruised or because he saw the horrors of battle, also things that would not have been perceived as honorable in this time. This was all rebellious on Jericho's part, because this was essentially a painting that criticized war. And he exhibited this in the 1812 painting side by Side at the Paris Salon, and reviews were very mixed after.

[Holly Fry]

This, less than Enthusiastic reception. Jericho decided to give up art, at least temporarily. He enlisted to fight against Napoleon's forces during the Hundred Days Rule, joining the musketeers. In his 2007 book about the Medusa and Jericho, historian Jonathan Miles speculated that this might have been an effort to distract himself from Alexandrine, although once the king was exiled, his service was basically over and he went right to her chateau.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Jericho next traveled to Italy to work and study in Rome and Florence. And while there, he became deeply engrossed by the work of Michelangelo. Who wouldn't? He also witnessed an event in Rome that became the focus of his next large project, and that was a carnival horse race. So this was the subject of his unfinished work, the Race of the Riderless Horses. And for this project, Jericho created multiple detailed studies of the moment just before the race begins, showing frightened horses and their keepers trying to control them. So, just FYI, if you search for this work, you may see multiple different images. That's because some of them are the studies that he was doing to prepare for the final piece. He was never able to create the large scale painting he had in mind, though, in part because his fixation on the wreck of the Medusa supplanted all of his other work.

[Holly Fry]

But he didn't move on to the Medusa project right away. He created a series of lithographs first, some of which were quite erotic in nature. The timing of the Medusa story hitting the papers and becoming a source of outrage over the poor leadership aligned with a moment when Jericho probably needed a diversion. His aunt by marriage and paramour Alexandrine, had broken things off with them. And then the two of them started their affair anew and Alexandrine became pregnant. So the need for escape continued in a different way. He did not have further contact with Alexandrine, and the son that she had was surrendered to the state.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, this is one of those cases where it's not explicitly laid out, but everything indicates that it would have been obvious to his uncle that they had been having an affair. So presumably his uncle and Alexandrine were either not having a very sexual marriage by this point, or there was something else in the mix that would have prevented the two of them considering basically this was going to be super obvious that she had had an affair. When Jericho returned to Paris from Italy, the story of the Medusa had been revealing itself layer by layer, and exposing the bad decisions that had started with the appointment of Chamoret to the role of captain of the flagship Medusa. I mean, if you want to get technical. You could go farther back than that and say it starts with like, colonization. But for the purposes of this event, that's what that's what was being pointed to as the beginning. Jericho invited Alexandre Corrid and Henri Savigny to his studio to tell him personally about their experiences, and he worked with these two survivors to create a meticulously rendered illustration of the raft so that he could ensure the project that he had in mind would be as accurate as possible. This also became something of a political statement for Jericho because he saw in the Medusa story a parallel of the ways that the French government had become ineffectual in the years following the Napoleonic Wars.

[Holly Fry]

Like the first part of this one, the third act is where some gory bits are. So let's take a breather before that and hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

You're a man down on your luck and your brilliant plan. Cut a hole in the roof of a McDonald's, sneak in before opening and rob the place not once but 45 times. This isn't some Hollywood fantasy. It is the unbelievable true story behind the new film Roofman, starring Channing Tatum as Jeffrey Manchester. After his arrest, he escapes prison by literally clinging to the bottom of a truck. And then he secretly lives inside a Toys R Us for six months, eating baby food, exercising on store bikes, even installing his own surveillance system using baby monitors. All while planning his next move. Directed by Derek C. In France, Roofman delivers humor, thrills and heart. Not to mention a powerful performance from Kirsten Dunst as Lee, the woman who unknowingly falls for the man living a double life in a career. Best performance Tatum brings charm, warmth and humor to a story that's as thrilling and funny as it is heartfelt. Don't miss the new film Roofman, only in theaters October 10th. One of the wildest true stories you will ever see.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the Old Gays pull back the curtain on their brand new podcast, Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare. With over 300 years of experience between them, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve four lifetimes of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. Listen in to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine, available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, to visually recreate the harrowing scenes that Cor and Savigny had described to him, Jericho felt that he had to truly understand the ways that the human body deteriorated both while still alive and after death. So he started spending time in morgues and hospitals. A lot of time he attended dissections, and sometimes he actually painted while he was in the morgue. He created a painting in early 1819 called anatomical fragments, or sometimes you'll see it as Anatomical pieces. It is a study of a pile of severed limbs.

[Holly Fry]

In some cases, the artist was able to get body parts from deceased persons and take them back to his studio to observe their decomposition and make sketches and painted studies of them. He even made daily images of the same limb decaying day after day so he would have a complete and dated record of the process to use as a reference. This was not a secret. His friends knew that this was happening.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, they were a little squinked out by it, understandably, and thought he was being oddly obsessive and that he might get a weird infection from having all of these decomposing body parts around him. But nobody was like, don't do that. They were like, he's an artist, it's his work. All of this obsessive behavior was tied to the desire to once again become the darling of the Paris Salon. Theodore Jericho wanted his entry in the 1819 Salon to be a sure winner. He had been so influenced by Corriard that he depicted him in the painting. Corriard appears smack dab in the center of it. Sevigny is also in the painting, although he is less prominent. And Jericho worked on the Raft of the Medusa from 1818 to 1819, when it was shown publicly for the first time. And even then he was still working on it. Even after it had been placed in the gallery for the Salon. But before the Salon officially began, he continued to paint, adding several dead bodies to the Raft at that late stage.

[Holly Fry]

This painting is enormous. It's more than 16ft tall and 23ft wide. It's painted in the style of French Romanticism, which is the school of Arts and literature that followed Neoclassicism and rationalism. What Charles Baudelaire characterized in his essay what is Romanticism? As intimacy, spirituality, color, yearning for the infinite, expressed by all the means the arts possess. The individual is central to the ideas of Romanticism. Personal experience, imagination, connections to nature and transcendental experience are all frequently represented.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But Jericho's painting was a darker sort of Romanticism than was typical of the time. All of those studies that he made regarding the human body enabled him to depict very realistic bodies in agonized and in some cases dead states in the image. The handful of people that are remaining on the raft have seen their rescuers on the horizon. Some of them are waving rags of cloth to get the approaching ship's attention.

[Holly Fry]

Another aspect of Jericho's raft painting that made it unusual was that it was a depiction of contemporary events in a time when there were no photos and rarely any illustrations and news accounts. A large scale image of the horrific experience that the Raft contingent had been through, which had led to so many deaths, made a huge impression on the French public that was really grappling with the details of the irresponsible leadership and resultant suffering that made up the case. There had been an initial effort not to reference the Medusa in the title. At the request of the Salon, Jericho had agreed to call it the Scene of the Shipwreck. But Everybody knew that this was a depiction of the Medusa raft. It did not go over well at the salon. It did win a gold medal, but no title, which was unusual. Some critics criticized Jericho for selecting the shipwreck as subject matter.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, it was like, we kind of have to give you an award. Cause this is a really obviously amazing achievement in painting, but like, you're not gonna get a prize prize. And they just thought he was being very crass in using this and that he was exploiting the pain of these current events. But this painting brought the scandal of the Medusa back into the public consciousness. This, of course, came out three years after the wreck had happened. In our recent episode on Augustin Fresnel, we mentioned that he started the lighthouse improvement project for the French government in 1819. That was the same year that Jericho showed this painting.

[Holly Fry]

Though Jericho's painting of the raft didn't get a lot of positive attention in France, the account, written by Alexandre Courier and Henri Savigny, was hugely successful and was reprinted in multiple editions. For the fourth of these, Jericho painted four 10 by 16 and a half centimeter illustrations. The originals were given as gifts to Corriar. One was a watercolor version of the full painting of the raft. A second shows another survivor who had not been on the raft and landed far north of the Senegalese capital. In the painting, he appears before the king of the Mauritanians. The third is a scene in the hospital in San Luis, Senegal, where the survivors of the raft, including Corriere, are visited by officers from the Argus. And the fourth was a depiction of the moment the Medusa broke apart. That fourth painting has been lost.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1820, Theodore Jerico left France for England and he took the raft of the Medusa with him. The artwork's reception in England was far more enthusiastic than what it had been in France. This actually makes sense politically right. England had to cede Senegal to France. So seeing a massive painting that showed French ineptitude, frankly felt good to the English. The English language translation of Savigny and Corriard's book was also hugely popular in England. And both the book and the painting garnered rave reviews in the English press. I saw one review that was like, this is the best piece of art that has ever been created in the history of man. Like, they loved the Raft of the.

[Holly Fry]

Medusa, Jericho returned to France while the Raft of the Medusa was still drawing crowds in London. Although he did return to London as well. In the next two years, back home, he completed a series of portraits that were Informed by spending time with his friend Etienne Jean Georget, who was an early practitioner of modern psychiatry. While there were certainly studies of human behavior before the 19th century, the term term psychiatry had only been coined in 1808, so it was a newly established field in the early 1820s. Some accounts indicate that the portrait series was actually commissioned by Georget. This tracks because, like a lot of people studying and treating mental disorders at the time, Jose believed in physiognomy, which is the pseudoscience that says that a person's facial features are a direct indication of their character.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Jericho unveiled this portrait series, which consisted of paintings of people who had been deemed insane in 1822. The series, which is simply titled Les Monoman or Portraits of the Insane, included 10 paintings. Although all of them have not survived, at least that we know of, we.

[Holly Fry]

Don'T know the names of any of the people featured. It's possible that they were all hospitalized in asylums in Paris. The paintings are Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, Portrait of a Man Suffering from Military Delusions, A Woman Addicted to Gambling, and Portrait of a Child Snatcher. The style of each of these pieces was the same. All of them show the subjects from the waist or chest up in three quarter profile. The background in each of them is dark, with the sitter illuminated as though they were emerging from the darkness. None of the subjects is looking directly at the viewer.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And as you may have been counting in your head, Tracy read five titles there out of the ten that he made. We're going to talk about what we know about these portraits and what we don't in just a moment, because the path of these pieces through time has actually been a little uncertain. Georget seems to have had them until he died, and it's believed that at that point two of his students acquired them at auction and split them up. We're going to talk more about these paintings in just a bit.

[Holly Fry]

Jericho was also planning some additional large paintings, including one depicting the horrors of the slave trade. But he didn't get beyond the early stages with it, as his health undercut his ability to work at the large scale that he intended for it. Like so many other people, Jericho had tuberculosis. He also had two horse accidents that left him weakened. In his final weeks, when he had wasted away, Jericho painted his final self portrait, which is a haunting image that shows the ravages of the disease on him. He died on January 26, 1824.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The raft of the Medusa has continued to be lauded for its technical achievement and its extraordinary visual impact. While Jericho died waiting for someone to buy it, at the time he was in talks with the King of France to acquire was eventually acquired from his estate after his passing, and it has continued since then to be part of the louvre collection. In 1859, unwilling to loan the painting out, the Louvre commissioned Pierre Desiree Guillaumet and Etienne Antoineja to create a copy of it that they used for loaning purposes, while the original always stays in Paris.

[Holly Fry]

After he was released from prison in 1819, Hugues Duras de Chaumeray retired to the country where he racked up an enormous debt before his death More than 20 years later, on November 23, 1841.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Alexandre Corriard became a bookseller and a publisher, as well as a pretty widely known political activist. He was arrested many times for publishing controversial materials that criticized the monarchy and the French government. And he was actually imprisoned for this work at one point. He died in 1857.

[Holly Fry]

Henri Savigny was accused by a variety of people of himself being negligent regarding the way the Raft contingent was led. There were people from higher up the chain of command who tried to blame him for a lot of the horrors that had come to light. Although he initially fought these accusations, eventually it seems like he just tried to get out from under the shadow of the Medusa. He died in 1843.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, he quit the Navy after some of these accusations started because he just didn't want anything to do with it. Jericho's short life, he was only 32 when he died, left a mystery that is still unraveling. In 1863, five of Jericho's portraits of mental illness were reported found in the home of one of Georget's students. That was a man named Lachaise. And they were found by an art historian named Louis Viardot. Those five works were, after analysis, accepted as the work of Jericho. So again, those are a woman addicted to gambling, a child snatcher, a woman suffering from obsessive envy, a kleptomaniac, and a man suffering from delusions of military command.

[Holly Fry]

From the moment those paintings surfaced, people wondered where the other five were. It was assumed that the lot of 10 had been split evenly between Lachaise and another man named Mercall. The two of them were Georget's proteges. No one even knows what those other portraits are, although there have been lots of theories.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Then, in 2021, a biologist named Javier Burgos announced that he believed he had found one of them in a private collection in Italy. In a letter published in the Lancet in 2021. Burgos stated, the size of this portrait is congruent with the other five paintings. The composition is similar, that is an illuminated face over a dark background, and the portrayed individual wears a religious garment, a modest shazable of a similar color to the red scarf in the portrait, representing envy. The title of the portrait suggests it corresponds to sadness melancholy, as described by the French psychiatrist Dominique Esquirol, who was Georget's mentor. The condition is confirmed by the presence of wrinkles on the brows of the portrayed patient drawing, the classic Omega sign, Omega melancholicum, which was described by the German psychiatrist Heinrich Schul as a distinguishing feature of melancholy.

[Holly Fry]

Burreau had first seen this painting in an exhibit of other works by Giricault, and it took him by surprise. After he went public, he was contacted by another person at a gallery in Versailles who had what he believed was another of the missing paintings. This one had a note tucked into the back of it that said, quote, this portrait of an insane man painted by Gericault was given to me by the widow of de Marechal in 1866. Paris, 9 November. Louis Le Maire. The paper the note was written on was analyzed and found to be from the 19th century.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And that opened the door to another possible discovery. Sort of. There is a painting in the Louvre by Jericho called Portrait of a Man Called Vendin, and it came to Burgose's attention as another possible part of this series. It has long been attributed to Jericho, but there is disagreement as to whether it is part of this group of paintings. As of 2024, there was not a consensus about whether these new pieces were part of the 10 portrait series.

[Holly Fry]

And in July of this year, which is 2025, the French military withdrew its last troops from Senegal.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, we get art, we get politics, we get gross stuff.

[Holly Fry]

You get decomposing body parts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We can talk about all of that on Friday. Yeah, I also have a listener mail from our listener, Chloe, and I love this listener mail. Chloe writes, hey, Holly and Tracy, I've been listening to your podcast for the longest time and I finally thought I had a good enough reason to justify writing to you guys. Hey, you don't. Nobody needs to justify anything. Just write and say, hey, we're into it. Yes, I know it's probably a small reason, but I really wanted to write you, so here I am. I just recently listened to the Edward Muybridge episode and I was intrigued that one of the names he chose for himself was Helio, because as you mentioned it's the Greek name for sun, but also was more specifically used to refer to the Greek sun God Helios. Helios also being a God could be illuminating to Edward's personality. Oh yeah, you're right on the money. I don't think that's an accident. Now to refer to the subject line I have been listening to you guys for a very long time and I can vividly remember the first time I started listening. I was introduced to your podcast by my father when I was pretty young, definitely in elementary school. My very first episode was of course the Great Emu War which my dad had found delightful and set me up with because he knew I would feel the same. Much to his chagrin. I found some October episodes which I listened to after that. I hope you found the ghost who is looking for her tooth. Ever since about 10 years now, I've been listening and I just love everything about this podcast. I love the factual way you present and I love hearing behind the scenes episodes where I can hear your personal takes on everything. Finally, the way you approach queerness and queer historical figures has been really impactful to me. It's precisely because queerness is just another part of their story that I have felt more comfortable in my own skin as I grew up. This is very touching to me. It gets me choked up, so thank you. Me and my dad still listen to you guys, sometimes together, sometimes apart. You make my rides to work and school more enjoyable and help me to do productive things that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise. I believe this has led me to our obligatory pet tax. I have two dogs and two cats. First is Thor, my 10 year old golden retriever who is scared of thunder and much loves air conditioning more than any being I've ever met before. Second is my three year old German Shepherd Doberman Mix Loki. Although he gets up to a small amount of mischief, he's really sweet and loyal, choosing to follow me to every room in the house. I was gonna say that combo of dogs is like a dog that is probably super clingy. Our two cats are Sully and Boo Think Monsters Inc. Who are very nearly older than me and rightfully think they own the place. Sorry I don't have breeds for them. They may be mutt kitties. You know at the vet they call that a domestic short hair or long hair depending on your your coat. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for giving me such wonderful stories to listen to with a great deal of respect and gratitude. Chloe. Chloe, I love this email. I love these dogs. I want to hug those dogs so bad. And listen kitties too. I want all of it. I want all of it. The kitties are very pretty as well. Thank you so much. This is so delightful and I love knowing that and I also am very honored that someone would grow up with us and continue to listen and and want us to be part of their lives. It's it means a great deal to me. So thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you for sharing your babies with us that are so cute. And listen, this is a good email for right now cause it's about to be October time. We got some scary stuff lined up. Hopefully it won't trouble anyone any more than, you know, cannibalism and rotting corpses in your studio.

[Holly Fry]

I think we might even have the witch looking for her tooth that you mentioned earlier in the listener mail reading.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh as a classic coming up. Great. Great. So thank you, thank you, thank you. If you would like to write to us, you can do so so easy. That email address is history podcastheartradio.com you can also subscribe to us on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Which if you're into Halloween stuff, we got October October Spooky Things coming so we hope we will see you there.

[Holly Fry]

Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Holly Fry]

This is an I Heart podcast.