Facts about Liberty Leading the People
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Delacroix's painting was hidden from public view for nearly two decades after its 1831 rejection, remaining in private storage until 1848 when political circumstances finally allowed its exhibition.
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Delacroix's composition balances a pyramidal structure with Liberty at the apex, positioning her atop a barricade of corpses and debris to symbolize triumph emerging from violent sacrifice.
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Over 200 figures populate Delacroix's composition, ranging from bourgeois citizens to street urchins and National Guard soldiers united beneath Liberty's leadership.
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Delacroix used his mistress Virginie Daleux as the model for Liberty's face, though he deliberately obscured her identity by depicting the allegorical figure bare-breasted and idealized rather than as a realistic portrait.
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Museum visitors to the Louvre can view Liberty Leading the People hanging in the Denon Wing, where it has become one of France's most iconic national symbols representing republican values.
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X-rays revealed that Delacroix painted a prominent barricade beneath the figures in Liberty Leading the People, later covering it with additional composition layers.
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Delacroix included his own self-portrait as a boy holding a gun in the center-left of Liberty Leading the People, making the painting partly autobiographical.
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French government officials initially rejected Delacroix's painting in 1831 due to its revolutionary imagery, purchasing it only after the 1848 Revolution to promote republican ideals.
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The painting measures approximately 260 by 325 centimeters, making it one of the largest monumental works in the Louvre Museum's collection.
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Eugène Delacroix completed Liberty Leading the People in 1830, depicting the July Revolution with the bare-breasted allegorical figure of Liberty holding the French tricolor flag.