Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. This is one of the most historically important paintings in this collection. And it's important to remember, I think, how radical this painting was. Its Republican Revolutionary politics were palpable, a little bit, perhaps, lost to us, I think, today. The painting shows the revolution of 1830 on the streets of Paris. And what we see is a barricade, which was a makeshift blockade. And remember that Paris at this time was really a medieval city, and so that the streets were narrow, and they were winding, and it was easy to block off French troops. And they were made of furniture, they were made of wagons, they were made especially of cobblestones. And you can see the cobblestones down in the very foreground. Over those cobblestones strides a figure who one would not have actually seen on the streets of Paris. So we have this mixture of the real and the unreal, because we have this allegorical figure of Liberty herself carrying the French tricolor flag, which represents equality, fraternity, and liberty—the values of the revolution.

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