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| Medusa: The Shipwreck, The Scandal, The Masterpiece | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Miles
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Category: Book
Buy New: $24.62
New (10) Used (4) from $24.62
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1659761
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0224073036
EAN: 9780224073035
ASIN: 0224073036
Publication Date: April 24, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. Expected US delivery in 7-10 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
History as a "Ripping Good Yarn" August 28, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you`ve been fortunate enough to visit Paris, there's a good chance you've gone to the Louvre. There you may have found yourself looking at a very large and very striking painting, The Raft of the Medusa, by Theodore Gericault.
The painting graphically portrays men dying, dead, and clinging to life on a raft at sea, while frantically signaling to a distant ship on the horizon in the hope of rescue. Was this painting based on a real incident? How did these men come to find themselves there? Why did Gericault paint this horrific work? How did the public react to it?
Jonathan Miles in his excellent new book, Medusa: The Shipwreck, The Scandal, The Masterpiece, answers with passion and wit these and more questions about the events that inspired this masterpiece. Compelling though the astonishing acts of heroism, savagery and villainy spawned by this horrific ship wreck are, they're only part of the story. The resulting scandal rippled through 19th Century French and British politics and society for many years.
Miles' work is an excellent piece of scholarship that is also a "ripping good yarn" of a wreck at sea and human survival at its rawest. It also a study of a cover-up and justice, both gained and tragically denied. In telling the story behind Gericault's memorable painting, Miles demonstrates how events can influence art, and how art in turn can influence events.
Whether you are a Historian, Art Historian or just someone looking for a good book that provides food for thought, Jonathan Miles' vivid account of the Medusa and its fate is well worth a read.
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