Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People. In 1830 revolution once more overtook France, when a popular uprising toppled the French king Charles X. A few months later, the artist Eugene Delacroix immortalised the events of the July Revolution in a painting which remains one of the icons of the age. His allegorical depiction of a Paris barricade, with the figure of Liberty clutching a tricolore while standing on a pile of corpses, is a powerful image which has provoked much debate in the years since it was first unveiled to an enthusiastic public.

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Programme ID: b015zrrj

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015zrrj

Auto-category: 759.4 (Painting—France)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 1831, the German poet Heinrich Heine visited the Salon in Paris, the largest and most important annual art exhibition in Europe.