Freedom leads the people

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Freedom leads the people (Eugène Delacroix)
Freedom leads the people
Eugène Delacroix , 1830
Oil on canvas
260 × 325 cm
Louvre

Freedom leads the people ( French La Liberté guidant le peuple ) is a painting by the French painter Eugène Delacroix . The 2.60 × 3.25 meter picture was created in 1830. It is now in the Louvre in Paris .

background

On July 27, 1830, the population of Paris rose up in an uprising that went down in history as the July Revolution. The cause of the revolution was the reactionary politics of Charles X , whose aim was to restore the conditions as they had prevailed before 1789 and thus to restore the domination of the nobility . His cabinet ruled consistently outside the Chamber of Deputies . The July Revolution was triggered by the so-called Juliordonnanzen , in which Karl ordered the Chamber of Deputies to be dissolved, the electoral process to be changed to the detriment of ordinary people and press censorship to be introduced. Sections of the population set up barricades ; up to 6000 pieces were counted on the second day of the uprising. Mattresses served as a bullet trap. On the side of those seeking refuge, cobblestones were joined to form a kind of staircase, which one stormed over when the enemy was repulsed - that was the "walking on the barricades". The three-day uprising of the population resulted in the final overthrow of the Bourbons in France and the renewed seizure of power by the bourgeoisie in a more liberal kingdom.

The paintings

The picture processes the barricade fighting in Paris on the second of the three days of the revolution. It was the bloodiest day and the decisive turning point for the uprising.

The July Revolution of 1830 was a brief but violent and violent confrontation between citizens and authorities. There were deaths on both sides, as can be seen in the foreground, two dead soldiers lie at the bottom right, their faces turned away. Delacroix lets gun smoke waft through the streets of Paris. The people have no leader in the true sense of the word, their uprising comes spontaneously and out of the crowd. Delacroix gives them a leader who, under the name Marianne, forms the national figure of the French Republic . She has just stormed over the barricades, in the right part of the picture you can see some of the boards that form the protective wall. Bare-breasted and barefoot as she is, she seems unreal, almost like a goddess. It is the symbol of freedom ( libertas ) adopted by the Romans . She has the Jacobin freedom cap on her head , in her hand she is swinging the tricolor, forbidden by the Bourbons, and turning to the citizens behind her with an encouraging look, as if she wanted to persuade them to follow her. To her left is a man with cylinder or beaver to see and rifle. Delacroix was in Paris at the time of the uprising, but had not taken part. For a long time it was assumed that he portrayed himself in this figure. Current research in art history, however, assumes that this is Etienne Arago , a French writer who actively participated in the overthrow of the Bourbons. The colors of the tricolor blue, white and red are a recurring element in the painting, especially in the clothes of the injured man at the feet of the figure of freedom as well as in the blue-white-red powder vapor in the background.

The picture was exhibited in the Palais du Luxembourg soon after the overthrow and achieved enormous popularity. The French state bought the painting, but it quickly disappeared in the depot, possibly because its revolutionary message was not acceptable to the new regime of Louis-Philippe I either. At the Paris World's Fair in 1855 it was only shown briefly to the public. It was not returned to the permanent exhibition of the Palais du Luxembourg until 1863 and has been part of the Louvre collection since 1874. In 2013 it was on display as part of the reopening of the Louvre-Lens in Lens .

The image program could have been inspired by Auguste Barbier's revolutionary poem La Curée (Eng. The Hunt ). In it, freedom is described as "a powerful woman with powerful breasts / with a rough voice and rough charms". This description, in turn, referred to the fourth estate as the bearer of the revolution.

reception

Template graphics with a picture quote of Marianne and the armed boy, who is shown here as a graffiti sprayer, at a courtyard entrance in Düsseldorf , 2015
  • The image of Marianne , depicted as a symbol of freedom in Freedom Leading the People , is a French cultural icon .
  • The armed boy to the right of the female figure inspired the French writer Victor Hugo to write the character of Gavroche in his novel Les Misérables .
  • The British band Coldplay used Freedom leads the people as the cover picture for the album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, which was released in June 2008 . The band Laibach uses La Liberté guidant le peuple , together with a picture of a drummer, on an official band t-shirt from 2012.
  • The street artist PBOY created a mural in Paris in January 2019 in which he refers to Freedom leads the people . He equates the yellow vest movement with 'walking on the barricades'.

literature

  • TJ Clark: The Absolute Bourgeois Artist and Politics in France 1848 to 1851 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1981, ISBN 3-499-25150-7 .
  • Alain Daguerre de Hureaux: Delacroix. The complete work . Zurich 1994.
  • Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen: Masterpieces in Detail . Volume 2, Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8228-1371-0 .
  • Nicos Hadjinicolaou: Freedom leads the people by Eugène Delacroix. Sense and contradiction . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1991, ISBN 3-364-00221-5 .
  • Winfried Nerdinger : From Classicism to Impressionism. Martin Lurz Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-87501-065-5 .
  • Sabine Slanina: From event picture to picture event. “Freedom leads the people to the barricades” by Eugène Delacroix , in: Uwe Fleckner: Pictures make history. Historical events in the memory of art . De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 3-05-006317-3 , pp. 253-265.

Web links

Commons : Freedom guides the people  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Slanina: From event picture to picture event. “Freedom leads the people to the barricades” by Eugène Delacroix , in: Uwe Fleckner, Pictures make history. Historical events in the memory of art . De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 253-265.
  2. ↑ Sabine Slanina: From event picture to picture event , pp. 253–265.
  3. ^ French Cultural Icons ( Memento June 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), nvcc.edu, accessed January 4, 2013
  4. ↑ tagesschau.de: Pictures of the day. Retrieved January 9, 2019 .