The topical interest of the _Raft of the Medusa_ had caused the public to receive this picture with favour, in spite of its daring departure from the generally accepted canons of the “grand style.” The case was different when Delacroix showed at the Salon of 1822 the _Dante and Virgil_ (No. 207, Plate XLVII.), which was inspired by Géricault’s great picture, but applied that artist’s principles to a subject taken from literature,—from Dante’s “Inferno,”—and was therefore considered as a direct challenge to the academic host. To-day it is difficult to understand the indignation aroused by the young artist, who became forthwith the acknowledged head of the so-called Romanticist school, although he refrained from taking part in any propaganda. In this, his first important exhibited picture, he proved himself a true painter in the sense in which Rubens was a painter—that is to say, he no longer gave primary importance to drawing, with colour added afterwards in the manner of a tinted cartoon. In the _Dante and Virgil_ colour and the actual sweep of the brush assumed at once a vital and constructive function, no longer separable from drawing and design. [Illustration: PLATE XLVI.—JEAN LOUIS ANDRÉ THÉODORE GÉRICAULT (1791-1824) No. 338.—THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA (Le Radeau de la Méduse) The raft of the wrecked Medusa, with the survivors of the crew, is floating on the stormy sea. In the foreground on the left, surrounded by dead sailors, a father is holding with his left hand the nude body of his dying son. On the right, a corpse is partly resting on the raft, partly floating on the water. Farther back the officer, Corréard, is seen pointing out to the surgeon, Savigny, the brig _Argus_, which appears on the far horizon under the clouded sky. At the far end of the raft a mulatto and a sailor have hoisted themselves on to some barrels to wave some rags, so as to attract the attention of the distant ship. Painted in oil on canvas. 16 ft. 1½ in × 23 ft. 6 in. (4·91 × 7·16.)]