The Raft of the Medusa
1819 · Oil on canvas · Musée du Louvre, Paris
📦 Free shipping on every order — or upgrade to Express ($14.9) at checkout. Most orders arrive in ~4–8 business days (Express 2–4).
This print
About this work
- Artist
- Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)
- Year
- 1819
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 491 × 716 cm
- Collection
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Movement
- Romanticism
Survivors of the wreck of the French frigate Méduse, adrift for thirteen days on a makeshift raft off the coast of West Africa, wave desperately at a ship on the horizon while the dead and dying slump around them. The disaster of July 1816, in which about 150 people were abandoned and only fifteen lived, had become a political scandal, and Géricault, aged 27, chose it for an uncommissioned canvas more than seven metres wide. He interviewed survivors, built a scale model of the raft and studied corpses in hospitals and morgues to get the flesh right. Shown at the Salon of 1819 under the neutral title Shipwreck Scene, it divided critics and made his name. The Louvre acquired it after his death in 1824, and it hangs there as the founding image of French Romantic painting.
This exhibition-poster edition shows the whole work beneath original typography set in-house. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Survivors waving at a distant ship from a raft of the dead, a vast dark history picture for a study, den or long hallway at 24×36 in black. A charcoal, deep green or warm grey wall; it wants distance and should hang alone.
- Style
- Exhibition poster of a Romanticism painting
- Era
- 19th century (1819)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Palette
- cream & beige
- Mood
- grand
- Rooms
- living room, dining room, dorm room, hallway or entryway
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. Prints at 12×18, 16×24, 24×36 in — 12×18 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 16×24 above a desk, console or in a hallway; 24×36 as the statement piece above a sofa or bed.
Framing. Exhibition posters sit best in a slim black frame with no mat — the typeset margin is the mat.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Raft of the Medusa in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Raft of the Medusa painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
A fine-art print
The same artwork as a clean fine-art print — the image shown large with a minimal caption.
The full-bleed edition
The same plate printed edge-to-edge, filling the whole sheet — bold and immersive.
