Liberty Leading the People

1830

Oil on canvas, 260 × 325 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

A bare-breasted woman with the tricolor flag leads armed Parisians over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen. It records the three days of street fighting in July 1830 that toppled King Charles X.

Shown at the Salon of 1831; its other title was simply A Barricade.
Look at the boy with two pistols at her side and the man in a top hat holding a gun.
Photographed in May 2024, just after a cleaning and retouching of the paint surface.
An allegory walks beside real people: Liberty is a symbol, yet the men around her wear the everyday clothes of Parisians from different classes.
The state bought it in 1831, soon stored it and later entrusted it to the artist; it reached the Louvre in 1874.

Allegory: A figure or story that stands for an abstract idea.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)