The Big Picture

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     Death of Sardanapalus, Eugene Delacroix.  Now this is a picture. 145 x95 inches.  Facing defeat, the king orders all his possessions destroyed and his women killed.  Genghis Khan once, when facing defeat, had all the saddles and everything flammable piled into a huge beehive, and was going to burn himself alive when facing capture.  Hitler tried to do the same thing to Germany.  Our President is doing this today.  Speaking of incompetent vicious captains,




The Raft of the Medusa

     De Chaumereys had not been to sea for 20 years.  Following the Bourbon restoration, this person was given the job of transporting families and soldiers to Africa.  Following the advice of a passenger and ignoring his officers, he piled the Medusa up on the Arguin sand bank, and took off in his lifeboat, abandoning a raft of survivors.  This is a horror story beyond the ability to comprehend, as it was so so avoidable.  De Chaumereys was put on trial but not executed because this would have showed the king as what he was, an obese nobody.  The Bourbons were a curse on France.  This picture was painted with great skill by Theodore Gericault, who had the carpenter who built the raft reconstruct it in his studio.  If I ever make the trip to France this is at the top of my "Must See" list.
This painting measures in at a whopping 16'1"x23'6".




     The Sardanapalus painting is used to huge effect in the "Runaway Horses" assassination scene in the more than outstanding film Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters.  I could not find that particular shot so here are the young men swearing an oath of ferocious, mindless patriotism.




     After reading about today's subject on Wiki, I decided to include this, The Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer's masterpiece and my favorite painting.  It turns out he was influenced by the Gericault painting and so it rightly belongs in this post.  I have always identified with the man on the boat, down to the way he is dressed.  I have always been afraid of being adrift in an ocean, as sharks scare me very much.


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