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.Producer: Natalia Fernandez.

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Programme ID: b015zrrj

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

Auto-category: 759.4 (French painting and sculpture - 19th century)

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.