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Decoding One of the Most Provocative Paintings in Art
The painting that every history lover should know
Works of art can sometimes be judged by how deeply their emblems and motifs have lodged in the collective memory.
On this measure, Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People has few rivals. The painting — endlessly appropriated for political activism, advertising and entertainment — has entered the cultural consciousness as shorthand for hope through resistance.
It has appeared in movements like the May 1968 protests in France, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, Black Lives Matter posters and the Yellow Vest protests, each time reinforcing the notion that revolt and valiance stride forward hand in hand.
To me, it is one of the great paintings of the Romantic movement. But what makes it so persuasive and provocative — enough that the French government hid it from view for decades?
Liberty Leading the People
Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People is an enormous painting — over 10 feet wide. Its grandeur and multi-person subject proclaim itself to belong to the noble tradition of history paintings, as a work of moral edification steeped in national heritage.
But the parts don’t quite fit. We see a composition dominated by ordinary people, war-mongering in the chaos of revolution.
Lifeless bodies lie beneath their feet; with the flavour of death all around, the established order is threatened as the city behind dissolves into a cloud of smoke. In these terms, it’s hard to overstate the radicalism of the painting.
At the centre is the allegorical figure of Liberty, her face depicted in profile with classical features, her hands clutching a musket and a flag.
She is a composite embodiment. In traditions of French revolutionary iconography, the figure of Liberty was given the name Marianne, a title that possibly implied a secular equivalent to the Virgin Mary. Meanwhile her bare breasts echo the figure of Venus, goddess of Love. On her head…
