The identity of the model in this painting is allegedly a Afro-Caribbean male by the name of Joseph.

Hailing from Santo Domingo, he worked as an acrobat before becoming a model, simultaneously acquiring a small bit of celebrity status in Paris due to his physical beauty. Theodore Géricault often included black people in his works due in part to his support of abolitionism, the accounts of slave rebellions in Haiti, and a fascination with exotic cultures that he shared with many of his contemporaries, basically painting the African male as a “noble savage” of sorts. You might think the man’s face reflects the exasperation at being ogled at so much.

Despite the patronizing undertones, Joseph’s likeness was put to study and immortalized as the central figure in The Raft of the Medusa, a depiction of the desperation the sailors of the Medusa experienced after the ship’s crash off the coast of Africa in 1816. And man, it was some really, really messed up stuff that would make the Donner Party look like a sugary sweet baby shower. Joseph was one of many studies and research material the painter partook in to bring the incident to life.

Géricault interviewed Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, a surgeon and an engineer, both of whom were survivors of the Medusa. He also made a scale model of the raft with the help of the two survivors and a carpenter to better make sense of the space he would place his subjects. Seems normal enough, but that’s not the best part.

He studied the bodies of cadavers, visited hospitals to observe the dead and dying, and brought the severed head of a deceased patient from the local mental asylum to his studio to portray both the the lifelessness of both the sailors’ spirits and the corpses they left on board to nourish them. Brrr.

Even Daniel Day-Lewis didn’t have to dig up Lincoln’s corpse for Lincoln nor Charlize Theron actually kill people for Monster to achieve that level of dedication.  His fascination with taboo subjects continued to his later works.