The Painting France Tried to Hide — Raft of the Medusa

[00:00:00]Did you know that one of the most famous paintings in the world is hiding one of the darkest stories in history? In 1816, a French naval frigate called [music] the Medusa ran aground off the coast of Africa. The officers took the lifeboats for themselves.

[00:00:13]>> [music] >> 150 men were left behind on a makeshift raft with almost no food and almost no water. Then the officers cut the tow ropes and rode away. What happened next took 13 days. The men turned on each other. The weakest were [music] killed.

[00:00:28]The sick were thrown overboard. The dead were eaten. By the time a rescue ship finally spotted the raft, only 15 people were still alive. A French painter named Theodore Gericault heard the survivors' accounts and spent over a year creating a massive painting of the moment of rescue. It now hangs in the Louvre.

[00:00:45]Millions of people have stood in front of it. They see desperate men reaching toward a distant ship. They see hope.

[00:00:51]What they are never told is what those men [music] did to survive long enough to be saved.