Liberty Leading the People, 1830
Eugène Delacroix
Oil on canvas · 260 x 325 cm
An allegorical Liberty strides bare-breasted over the barricades, flag raised.
Bare-breasted Liberty strides over the barricades, tricolour raised and musket in hand, leading a ragged crowd through the smoke of revolution. Delacroix's blazing 1830 allegory has become the enduring symbol of freedom and the people's uprising.
What you're looking at
Liberty is an allegory and everyone around her is not, which is the odd mechanism of the painting: a bare-footed symbol striding through a heap of very specifically observed corpses. The boy on her left carries two pistols he plainly cannot manage. The man in the top hat has been claimed as Delacroix himself for two centuries and the claim has never been settled. On the right, through the smoke, are the towers of Notre-Dame.
On a Frame TV
About 5:4. Matted file — the clean crop cuts either the flag at the top or the bodies at the bottom, and the distance between them is the argument. Strong colour and high contrast; it carries a bright room easily.
Luxembourg Museum · Visit it in Paris →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Eugène Delacroix.
