July will mark 200 years since the disaster that inspired Théodore Géricault to paint The Raft of the Medusa (1819). A new film, partly shot in the Louvre where his great canvas hangs, was screened in the Paris museum during its annual festival of films about art (Journées Internationales du Film sur l’Art, Jifa), which ran from 22 to 31 January. In 1816, after the French navy frigate La Méduse ran aground off West Africa, a makeshift raft was cut loose from the convoy of lifeboats and drifted for 13 days. Of the 151 aboard, only 15 survived. Called The True Story of the Raft of the Medusa, the film by Herlé Jouon (2015) tells the horrific story involving suicides and cannibalism, the scandal that followed the attempted cover-up by officials and the young artist’s creation of his masterpiece.
