page_title: Liberty (personification)
section_title: Early modern period
hierarchical_section_title: Liberty (personification) / Early modern period
caption_attribution_description: Caricature by Thomas Rowlandson after a design by Lord George Murray: The Contrast 1792 / Which Is Best, showing a contrast of "British Liberty" vs. "French Liberty". On Left: Britannia with a lion at her feet, holding "Magna Carta" and a pole with a liberty (Phrygian) cap on it (instead of the usual trident), to emphasize British liberty under law. A lion is at her feet, and a ship sails off in the background. Inscription: "Religion, Morality, Loyalty, Obedience to the Laws, Independence, Personal Security, Justice, Inheritance, Protection, Property, Industry, National Prosperity, HAPPINESS." On Right: Scrawny ill-clad personification of France with Medusa snakes instead of hair, treading on beheaded corpse with man hanged from lantern-post in background. Inscription: "Atheism, Perjury, Rebellion, Treason, Anarchy, Murder, Equality, Madness, Cruelty, Injustice, Treachery, Ingratitude, Idleness, Famine, National &amp; Private Ruin, MISERY" Overall question, "Which is best?" Published on behalf of the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, 1792. Hand-coloured etching. British Museum, London.
context_page_description: The concept of liberty has frequently been represented by personifications, often loosely shown as a female classical goddess. Examples include Marianne, the national personification of the French Republic and its values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, the female Liberty portrayed on United States coins for well over a century, and many others. These descend from images on ancient Roman coins of the Roman goddess Libertas and from various developments from the Renaissance onwards. The Dutch Maiden was among the first, re-introducing the cap of liberty on a liberty pole featured in many types of image, though not using the Phrygian cap style that became conventional. The 1886 Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi is a well-known example in art, a gift from France to the United States.
context_section_description: The medieval republics, mostly in Italy, greatly valued their liberty, and often use the word, but produce very few direct personifications. One exception, showing just the cap of liberty between daggers, a copy of coins by the assassins of Julius Caesar, featured on a medal struck by Lorenzino de' Medici to commemorate his assassination of his cousin Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence in 1547.  Liberty featured in emblem books, usually with her cap; the most popular, the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa, showed the cap held on a pole by the 1611 edition. 
  With the rise of nationalism and new states, many nationalist personifications included a strong element of liberty, perhaps culminating in the Statue of Liberty.  The long poem Liberty by the Scottish James Thomson (1734), is a lengthy monologue spoken by the "Goddess of Liberty", "characterized as British Liberty", describing her travels through the ancient world, and then English and British history, before the resolution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 confirms her position there.  Thomson also wrote the lyrics for Rule Britannia, and the two personifications were often combined as a personified "British Liberty".
  A large monument, originally called the "Column of British Liberty", now usually just the "Column to Liberty", was begun in the 1750s on his Gibside estate outside Newcastle-on-Tyne by the hugely wealthy Sir George Bowes, reflecting his Whig politics.  Set at the top of a steep hillock, the monument itself is taller than Nelson's Column in London, and topped by a bronze female figure, originally gilded, carrying a cap of liberty on a pole.  In other images, she took the seated form already very familiar from the British copper coinage, where Britannia had first appeared in 1672, with shield but carrying the cap on a rod as a liberty pole, rather than her usual trident.
  In the run up to the American War of Independence, this conflated figure of Britannia/Liberty was attractive to American colonists agitating for the full set of British civil rights, and from 1770 some American newspapers adopted her for their masthead.  When war broke out, the Britannia element quickly disappeared, but a classical-looking Liberty still appealed, and was now sometimes just labelled "America".  In the 1790s Columbia, who had been sometimes present in literature for some decades, emerged as a common name for this figure.  Her position was cemented by the popular song Hail, Columbia (1798). 
  By the time of the French Revolution the modern type of imagery was well-established, and the French figure acquired the name of Marianne from 1792. Unlike her predecessors, she normally wore the cap of Liberty on her head, rather than carrying it on a pole or lance.  In 1793 the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral was turned into a "Temple of Reason" and, for a brief time, the Goddess of Liberty replaced the Virgin Mary on several altars.
  The Great Seal of France, applied to the official copies of legislation, had a Marianne with Phrygian cap of liberty from 1792, until she was replaced the next year by a Hercules after Jacques-Louis David. A standing Liberty, with fasces and cap on a pole, was on the seal of Napoleon's French Consulate, before being replaced by his head.  Liberty returned to the seal with the French Second Republic in 1848, seated amid symbols of agriculture and industry, designed by Jacques-Jean Barre. She carries fasces on her lap, now wears a radiant crown with seven spikes or rays, and leans on a rudder.  After a gap with the Second French Empire, a version of the 1848 design was used by the French Third Republic and under subsequent republics to the present day.  The radiant crown, never used in antiquity for Libertas (but for the sun god Sol Invictus and some later emperors), was adopted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi for the Statue of Liberty.  This was conceived in the 1860s, under the French Second Republic, when Liberty no longer featured on the seal or in French official iconography. The Great Seal's rudder was another original borrowing from classical iconography. 
caption: The Contrast: 1792: Which Is Best, by Thomas Rowlandson, an anti-French cartoon
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