Eugène Delacroix was not on the barricades in July 1830, when Paris rose against King Charles X. He wrote to his brother soon after: if he had not fought for his country, at least he would paint for her. The picture he made, Liberty Leading the People, is the most famous image of revolution ever painted.
The woman at the center is not a real person but an allegory, Liberty herself, in a Phrygian cap, one of the symbols of freedom, a bayonet in one hand and the red, white and blue tricolor flag in the other. She is bare-breasted and barefoot, striding forward over the bodies of the dead. Around her are the people who made the revolution: a worker with a saber, a man in a top hat with a musket, and a boy waving two pistols. The boy is often linked with Gavroche, the street urchin in Victor Hugo's later novel Les Misérables. The man in the top hat is sometimes said to be Delacroix himself, though no one can prove it.
The new government of King Louis-Philippe bought the painting in 1831, then quickly put it away. A picture glorifying a popular uprising turned out to be awkward for a king. It stayed out of sight for years and did not hang permanently in the Louvre until 1874.
The painting has had an extraordinary afterlife. It appeared on French banknotes, and its image of Liberty has inspired posters, stamps and protests around the world. The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, belongs to the same family of ideas.
It remains political: look at who is in the picture, and who is under the feet of the figures at the front.
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People appears on our: