(jazz piano) - [Dr. Zucker] We're
in the Louvre in Paris looking at large canvas by Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People. This painting dates to 1830. This is Romanticism. - [Dr. Harris] It
depicts an event of 1830. This is a contemporary subject. It's important to remember
that large paintings like this were generally reserved
for history paintings, at least according to
the rules of the Academy. But here, like Gericault before him, Delacroix is taking on
a contemporary subject. This is something that
people in Paris experienced in July of 1830. - [Dr. Zucker] This was the revolution that ousted the
reactionary king Charles X, and installed on the throne
the more moderate king, Louis-Philippe. - [Dr. Harris] But we're seeing a moment where the outcome of the
Revolution is not sure. We're seeing fighting
on the streets of Paris. We see the very recognizable
Cathedral of Notre Dame in the background. - [Dr. Zucker] Notre Dame
was a symbol of the monarchy. It was a symbol of conservativism and yet Delacroix represents
at the top of one of its towers the tricolor, the flag
of the revolutionaries. - [Dr. Harris] Liberty
is an allegorical figure. She is a symbol of an idea
that led the revolutionaries, many of them to give up their
lives to oust a conservative and reactionary monarch. - [Dr. Zucker] One might just think of the Statue of Liberty. That's not an actual person,
it's a personification of an idea and here, too, this
woman is a personification of the idea of liberty,
the idea of freedom. The fact that her breasts
are visible is a reference to antiquity, to the birth of
democracy, to Ancient Greece and the Roman republican tradition. - [Dr. Harris] Liberty
strides across the barricade, this barrier that has been set
up in the streets of Paris. - [Dr. Zucker] Paris was
still a medieval city with narrow, winding streets. The grand boulevards of
the later 19th century had not yet been built, and so
what the revolutionaries did is they dug up the cobblestones
that paved the streets and they piled them up and
erected these barricades that were both defensive positions, but also impeded the movements
of the Royalist troops. - [Dr. Harris] But
what's fascinating to me is this call by Liberty to
climb over the barricade, to trespass that barrier,
and to move forward, to continue to fight
even more aggressively for these ideals. - [Dr. Zucker] Liberty's face is shown in a perfect classical profile, recalling Ancient Greek and
Roman images, but in doing so, she's also turning around
to call the rebels forward and we can see this throng of people moving into the distance. But in the foreground, we see
two very particular figures. We see a man with a pistol in his waist. He wears his shirt with no jacket. He's a member of the lower
class but the pin in his hat expresses that he's got
revolutionary sympathies. - [Dr. Harris] Delacroix's
clearly giving us this idea of people of all classes coming together because the figure
right next to the worker is more nicely dressed. He's got a top hat on, a jacket, a vest. He holds a hunting rifle
instead of a pistol. - [Dr. Zucker] And so this revolution is not only for the poor. It's also for the middle classes. - [Dr. Harris] Which is what makes it so profoundly dangerous. This is not one class against another. These are the people coming together. - [Dr. Zucker] On the right
side of the canvas is a boy who holds not one but two
pistols and seems rather wild. He's a schoolboy and you know that from the velvet cap he wears and from the satchel at his side. - [Dr. Harris] Below
him, we see two soldiers who have fallen, and so it's not just that Delacroix's giving
us this sense of victory, of Liberty striding forward, but also the terrible costs of revolution. - [Dr. Zucker] Best summed up for me by the man in the lower left who's wearing a nightshirt
as if he's been dragged from his bed and murdered
by Royalist soldiers. He's only wearing one sock. His shirt is drawn up and so
he's nude from the waist down. - [Dr. Harris] And his shirt is bloody and he's incredibly close to us. In fact, his right arm is foreshortened and moves into our space. But the figures in the
foreground of the dead and the dying and the
wounded are all in our space. This is a painting much like
Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, or Gros' Pest House in Jaffa, that puts forward the violence
in an unidealized way. - [Dr. Zucker] The entire
scene is one of chaos, one of energy. It is filled with diagonals,
with smoke, with movement, and yet Delacroix has also
contrived a classicizing pyramid to organize all of these figures,
creating a sense of order within the chaos. One of the reasons the
painting feels so energetic is because of the loose brushwork and because of the brilliant
colors that Delacroix uses. The tricolor, the blues in the sky, the red sash of the figure
that looks up to Liberty, all stand out and are in stark contrast to the more muted colors
that were traditional at this moment. - [Dr. Harris] Delacroix is
violating so many of the rules of the Academy. This is not a painting
with perfect finish. In other words, we easily
see the hand of the artist, the brushwork. This is not a painting where
we see a careful attention to line and contour. Rather, we have a sense of
the openness of contours, of the looseness of the
handling of the paint. - [Dr. Zucker] And the contingency
of each of these figures that if we waited just a moment, they would all have shifted position. - [Dr. Harris] This painting was purchased by King Louis-Philippe to
show that he was a champion of republican values and by republican, we mean the ideals of democracy. But, before the decade was over, in 1839, the painting was returned to Delacroix because it was perceived as dangerous. This was an image that
showed people coming together to overthrow a king, after all. But in 1848, at the time
of the next Revolution when Louis-Philippe is ousted, this painting is returned
to the museum once again. This is a good reminder of just
how politicized art could be in the 19th century in France. (jazz piano)