The Severed Heads

At the Paris Salon of 1819, Géricault caused a sensation with his monumental work The Raft of Medusa. The painting featured the dead, the dying and the survivors of a French shipwreck off the African coast. This catastrophe and the government’s handling of it caused a political scandal in France. In preparation for the painting, Géricault made numerous studies of corpses and body parts – one of these is The Severed Heads. The macabre realism in this picture marks a departure from previous ideals and a new interest in more dramatic subjects.