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The 1816 wreck of the French frigate Medusa, from which just a handful of passengers survived after nearly two weeks on a makeshift raft, was still very recent history when �ճ�é�ǻ�ǰ��� ��é���������ܱ��� painted the scene.

And they certainly recall “heroic narratives found in American and European history paintings,” she added, such as Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which hangs at the Met, and �ճ�é�ǻ�ǰ��� ��é���������ܱ���’s stunning “The Raft of the Medusa,” which is in the collection of the Louvre.

Indeed, she did not ask permission; she painted and let her work speak for itself, expecting to be put on equal footing with male painters like Eugène Delacroix and �ճ�é�ǻ�ǰ��� ��é���������ܱ���.

One of the show’s least-known and greatest early paintings is the 1978 “Wreckage of the Medusa,” which takes us beyond ��é���������ܱ���’s masterpiece, “The Raft of the Medusa,” to the raft’s disintegration at sea — a gorgeous expanse of blue beneath a narrow band of pink and blue sky.

There are classic painted works by Frédéric Bazille, �ճ�é�ǻ�ǰ��� Gericault and Eugène Delacroix in the exhibition, in a section devoted to portraiture.