Liberty leads the people by Delacroix Painting by Paul Meijering

Realistic acrylic painting of painter Eugene Delacroix featuring his most famous painting The Freedom Leads the People, all painted by the Dutch fine artist Paul Meijering - the original painting is 90 x 120 cm

The Freedom Leads the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by French painter Eugene Delacroix. It depicts Liberty as Marianne, the national symbol of France, leading the revolutionaries at the July Revolution of 1830. It is painted with oil paint. Measuring 260 by 325 centimetres, the canvas is one of the best-known and most imitated paintings in the history of French painting. The scene shows the well-known allegory of freedom: the woman (harking back to older representation methods for allegories) with her upper body bared (nudity as a sign of vulnerability - and thus courage - in contrast to the horror that is taking place). The woman wears a Phrygian hat referring to freedom. To her right, a little boy, referring to youth, is seen fearlessly holding two pistols.

Marianne was born in an Occitan poem in 1792. In October of that year, Guillaume Lavabre, a Protestant shoemaker from the southern French town of Puylaurens, wrote The Healing of Marianne.

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (Charenton-Saint Maurice, 26 April 1798 - Paris, 13 August 1863) is considered the most important French painter of the Romantic period (hence he is sometimes called "Le prince des romantiques"). He is also called a "literary painter" because he often borrowed his themes from writers such as Shakespeare.