thumb|400px|left|'''کلکِ مِدوسا''' ([[۱۸۱۹ (میلادی)|۱۸۱۹ میلادی) نقاش و سنگتراش فرانسوی '''تئودور ژریکو''' (۱۷۹۱ - ۱۸۲۴ میلادی)]]

'''کلکِ مِدوسا'''  نام اثری است از فرانسوی (۱۷۹۱ - ۱۸۲۴ میلادی) که تعدادی از نجات یافتگان ناو جنگی مدوسا را بر روی تخته پاره‌ای در میان موج‌های خروشان خلیج آرگوین در سنگال امروزی (سواحل غربی آفریقا) نشان می‌دهد. تئودور که یکی از پیشگامان جنبش رومانتیسیسم در اروپای غربی اواخر قرن هجدهم میلادی بود، این واقعه را در ابعادی نجومی (تقریباً ۵ در ۷ متر) پس از موج اعتراضات و حرکتهای سیاسی پس از غرق شدن کشتی مدوسا در فرانسه به تصویر کشید. 

خبر این اتفاق که توسط همین تعداد از بازماندگان به اروپا و فرانسه رسید، رسوایی بزرگی برای دولت فرانسه به وجود آورد. بسیاری از منتقدین، عدم کفایت کاپیتان کشتی و تاخیر در عملیات نجات از سوی دولت مرکزی را باعث کشته شدن بیش از ۱۴۰ نفر از خدمه می‌دانستند که با بسط و گسترش اعتراضات در پاسخ به این اتفاق به ظاهر ساده، نقطه عطفی در تاریخ فرانسه و رویگردانی از استثمار سیاهان توسط این کشور شکل گرفت.

این اثر هم اکنون در موزه لوور در پاریس نگهداری می‌شود.

== جستارهای وابسته ==

*فهرست تابلوهای نقاشی

{{Infobox Painting| image_file=Théodore_Géricault_-_Le_Radeau_de_la_Méduse.jpg
| title=The Raft of the Medusa
| artist=Théodore Géricault
| year=1818&ndash;1819
| type=Oil on canvas
| height=491
| width=717
| height_inch=193.3
| width_inch =282.3 
| city=Paris
| museum=Musée du Louvre
}}

The '''''Raft of the Medusa''''' () is a work by the French painter Salon of 1819, attracting passionate praise and condemnation. The painting depicts the desperate survivors of the French Medusa,'' which gained notoriety when it struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of Mauritania in 1816, at their first moment of apparent rescue. 

The painting was a political statement – the incompetent captain was an inexperienced but politically sound anti-Bonapartist –  and an artistic achievement that galvanized romantic painting and led to a break from the neoclassical style. The work was realized on the epic scale of a history painting, yet— and for the first time in France — it was based on a current news story.<ref>Several English paintings, for example The ''Death of Major Pierson'' by John Singleton Copley (1783)[http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=3104] also painted within two years of the event, had led the way here, as had emotive works of political propaganda such as Jacques-Louis David's unfinished ''Oath of the Tennis-Court'' and Napoleonic works such as ''Bonaparte Visiting the Plague House at Jaffa'' by Baron Gros.</ref>    The unblemished musculature of the central figure, waving to the supposed rescue ship, is reminiscent of the neoclassical, but the painting is broadly romantic. The naturalism of light and shadow, authenticity of the haggard bodies, and emotional character of the composition, differentiate it from neoclassical austerity. The ''Raft of the Medusa'' was a further departure from earlier works because it depicted contemporary events with ordinary and unheroic figures, rather than religious or classical themes.  However the ragged state of the figures' clothes means that the "unromantic" nature of modern dress was an issue that could be largely bypassed.  

thumb|left|One of the [[oil sketches produced for the final painting.]]
Impressed by accounts of the shipwreck, which had received huge publicity, the 25-year-old artist Théodore Géricault decided to make a painting based on the incident and contacted the authors of published accounts in 1818. In order to make his ''Raft of the Medusa'' as realistic as possible, Géricault made sketches of bodies in the morgue of the Hospital Beaujon, and even brought severed limbs into his studio to study their decay. The painting depicts a moment recounted by one of the survivors: prior to their rescue, the passengers saw a ship on the horizon, which they tried to signal (it can be seen in the upper right of the painting). It disappeared, and in the words of one of the surviving crew members, "From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound dispondency [sic] and grief".<ref></ref> The ship, the ''Argus,'' reappeared two hours later and rescued those who remained.

thumb|A charcoal sketch of one of the figures in the foreground.
Géricault used friends as models, notably the painter Eugène Delacroix as the figure in the foreground with his face turned downward and arms outstretched. Two of the actual raft's ten survivors, Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, with whom Géricault talked at great length, are seen in shadow at the foot of the mast.<ref>Hagen & Hagen, p.376</ref>

A bronze bas-relief of the painting adorns Géricault's grave in Louvre, comte de Forbin, was bought for the Louvre from Géricault's heirs after the artist's death in 1824.