page_title: Peace symbols
section_title: Later representations
hierarchical_section_title: Peace symbols / Olive branch / Later representations
caption_attribution_description: English: Ceiling of the Painted Hall, detail of King William III
context_page_description: A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by Pablo Picasso after World War II.
  In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a super-imposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808.
  The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols.
  The peace symbol is encoded by Unicode as part of the Miscellaneous Symbols block, at U+262E ☮ PEACE SYMBOL.
context_section_description: Poets of the 17th century associated the olive branch with peace. A Charles I gold coin of 1644 shows the monarch with sword and olive branch.  Throughout the 18th century, English coins show Britannia with a spear and olive branch.
  The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, contains an allegorical painting by James Thornhill, Peace and Liberty Triumphing Over Tyranny (1708–1716), depicting King William III and Queen Mary (who had enacted the English Bill of Rights) enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them. Peace, with her doves and lambs, hands an olive branch to William, who in turn hands the cap of liberty to Europe, where absolute monarchy prevails. Below William is the defeated French king, Louis XIV.
  In January 1775, the frontispiece of the London Magazine published an engraving of Peace descending on a cloud from the Temple of Commerce, bringing an olive branch to America and Britannia.  In July that year, the American Continental Congress adopted the "Olive Branch Petition" in the hope of avoiding a full-blown war with Great Britain.
  On the Great Seal of the United States (1782), the olive branch denotes peace, as explained by Charles Thomson, Secretary to Congress: "The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace & war which is exclusively vested in Congress."
caption: James Thornhill, Peace and Liberty Triumphing Over Tyranny
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