Focus on this artwork and explore the Background.
Mental aberration and irrational states of mind interested Romantic artists who questioned Enlightenment rationality.  Géricault, like many of his contemporaries, examined the influence of mental states on the human face and shared the belief, common in his time, that a face more accurately revealed character, especially in madness and at the moment of death.  In addition to analyzing faces of patients in hospitals and institutions for the criminally insane, he also studied the heads of guillotine victims.
Romantic Enlightenment