page_title: Liberty Leading the People
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Liberty Leading the People / Legacy
context_page_description: Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman of the people with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept of Liberty leads a varied group of people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour, which again became France's national flag after these events – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.
context_section_description: Although Delacroix was not the first artist to depict Liberty in Phrygian cap, his painting may be the best known early version of the figure commonly known as Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic and of France in general.
  The painting may have influenced Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables. In particular, the character of Gavroche is widely believed to have been inspired by the figure of the pistols-wielding boy running over the barricade. The novel describes the events of the June Rebellion two years after the revolution celebrated in the painting, the same rebellion that led to its being removed from public view.
  The painting inspired Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi's Liberty Enlightening the World, known as the Statue of Liberty in New York City, which was given to the United States as a gift from the French a half-century after Liberty Leading the People was painted. The statue, which holds a torch in its hand, takes a more stable, immovable stance than that of the woman in the painting. An engraved version of part of the painting, along with a depiction of Delacroix, was featured on the 100 franc note from 1978 to 1995.
  The painting has had an influence on classical music. George Antheil titled his Symphony No. 6 After Delacroix, and stated that the work was inspired by Liberty Leading the People.  The imagery was adapted by Robert Ballagh to commemorate Ireland's independence struggle on an Irish postage stamp in 1979, the centenary of the birth of Pádraig Pearse, and the painting was used for the band Coldplay's album cover Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, with the words Viva La Vida written in white. The cover of the book Enough is Enough: How to Build a New Republic by Fintan O'Toole references the painting, but with Kathleen Ni Houlihan holding the Irish tricolour in Dublin while the leaders of the three main political parties at the time (Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore) lie on the ground.
  During the 20 October 2011 episode of the BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time, host Melvyn Bragg led a panel discussion of painting.
caption: Freedom for France, freedom for the French (1940), a poster depicting Marianne
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