Introduction
ЭThe Raft of Medusa” is a major painting by a prominent French Theodore Gericault that is regarded as a portrait of romanticism. It illustrates an affair that its political and human features greatly concerned Gericault. Unlike many other artists of the stylistic times, Gericault ignored the neoclassical principles of standard antiquity and incorporated the emotional behavior of romanticism by the use of ordinary color, make-up, passion, and situation. Therefore the fact that the painting portrays extraordinary creative elegances implies a critical evaluation of its properties.
Expressive properties
The official semantics used by Gericault is symbolic of the Romantic susceptibilities and historical setting that mantle his artwork. His handling of light and shadow together with the inflammation and enthusiastic forces of the waves and wind add up to his intentions to arouse an increase of excitement in the viewer. The outstanding scale of the pictorial validates that it was intended for huge public viewers that would optimistically talk over not only their empathic responses to the theme but the debatable legality of the administrative mandate. Creating a visual dominance from anguish to optimism, marked in the transverse movement from lower left to upper right, Gericault formally articulates the emotional and bottomless inferences that the portrait recommends. The painting questions the nature of survival, brutality, and the wonder of the human spirit in the aspect of the remarkable and challenging power of natural settings, together with the inner tussle for significance and determination everyone faces. Only through his virtuosic management of compositional space, dainty, and melodramatic stage effects are the full strength and implication of his work made genuine (Jacques De Beaufort, 2014) .
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Contextual Properties
The wider romantic susceptibility marked in the painting is a result of unambiguous realism and instinctual association to the deprivations and dismay of relentless death, insanity, cannibalism, and desperateness that were a number of-of the thrilling circumstances experienced by survivors who were capable of finding a spot on the hurriedly prepared raft. The catastrophic and provocative naval misfortune in 1816 left a French frigate dashed off the along the coastline of Africa as well as the nation absorbed with disgrace. This is what Gericault regarded as his subject for the painting. This artwork by Gericault favored subject matter with prevalent human drama and an acknowledgment of the power of nature just like Eugene Delacroix also favored titanic and sublime subject matter (Jacques, 2014) .
Technical Properties
The Raft of Medusa is an oil painting which implies portrait with tints with a medium of oil drying oil as the binder. This artwork is an over-life-size picture of 491 cm x 716 cm equivalent to 16′1″x 23′6″ that depicts the consequences of the smashup of the French naval frigate Medusa.
Formal Properties
This ambitious work by Gericault is indicted with energy, tragedy, as well as histrionic opulence because it is an enormous scale that initially attracts the viewer. The further distinctive composition includes its sudden irritable darkness of the palette which portrays formation of human beings emerging from a pitch-black shadow into the golden brightness of a setting sun. The raft of survivors is bordered by the outpouring of the daring sea and the threatening clouds that suspend low over the horizon; this portrays the feeling of movement and energy all over. Additionally, the pictorial is dominated by a strong transverse outburst that plunges upward starting the lower left corner to the upper-right, this pictographic vigor is counter-composed by the bulk of the complete sail to the leftward that blocks up with the irritated air. The uniformity of light and the animated figural systems build a visual stiffness that however remains symphonic (Jacques De Beaufort, 2014) .
References
Jacques De Beaufort. (2014, March 3). Analysis And Synthesis. Theodore Gericault, The Raft of Medusa , 1818-19.
