Author's Notes:

The painting is 'The Raft of the Medusa', by the French painter and lithographer Theodore Gericault (1792-1824). It was first shown at the 1819 Paris Salon and caused a public and critical furore. The work has since become an icon of French Romanticism.

It depicts survivors of the wreck of the French naval frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on 2 July 1816. By the time they were rescued from a raft thirteen days later, only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, died of starvation and dehydration, or thrown themselves into the sea in despair. Those who survived practised cannibalism. The event became an international scandal.

The raft carried the survivors 'to the frontiers of human experience. Crazed, parched and starved, they slaughtered mutineers, ate their dead companions and killed the weakest.' Jules Michelet (1798-1874) a French historian, was one who approved of Gericault's painting. He wrote: 'our whole society is aboard the raft of the Medusa'.

Here, I have used the painting to echo similar concepts in today's society.

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