Liberty Leading the People


Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, oil on canvas, September - December, 1830. Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.

  • Romanticism; large canvases usually reserved for history painting, according to the rules of the Academy. 
  • Contemporary; Parisians experienced this.
  • Revolution against King Charles X and installed Louis Philippe. 
  • Fighting on the streets of Paris, towers of Notre Dame; symbol of the monarchy. 
  • Tricolor is the flag of the revolutionaries. 
  • Liberty is an allegorical figure; symbolic. Personification of an idea. 
  • Breasts resemble those of Greek/Roman sculptures; the birth of democracy. 
  • Paris was a medieval city with narrow, winding streets; Liberty calls to move across the barrier, to move forward, move aggressively. 
  • Liberty turns around to call the rebels; perfect classical profile reflects Greek and Roman sculpture. 
  • People of all classes coming together; people in worn, ugly clothing; others in more formal attire; shows terrible costs of the revolution; 
  • Scene of chaos; movement, smoke; classicizing pyramid that organizes all the figures; creates a sense of order; flag, blue sky, sharp contrast to the traditional muted colors. 
  • Delacroix is violating many rules of the Academy; brushwork easily visible, looseness; Image that showed people together, overthrowing a King. 
  • Her head is shown in profile—like a ruler on a classical coin. 
  • She wears atop her head a Phrygian cap, a classical signifier of freedom. This is an important bit of costuming—in ancient Rome, freed slaves were given one to wear to indicate their newly liberated status, and this headwear became a symbol of freedom and liberty on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
  • Allegory in art: a pictorial device intended to reveal a moral or political idea. 
  • Delacroix completed what has become both a defining image of French romanticism and one of the most enduring modern images of revolution.
  • Although Delacroix completed this painting during same year in which the event occurred, it is, at its core, a history painting. Delacroix depicts an event from the July Revolution of 1830, an event that replaced the abdicated King Charles X. 
  • Pyramidial structure; red/white/blue repeats; Liberty wears cap used by freed slaves
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