“Liberty Leading the People”, by Delacroix, leaves the Louvre for restoration

It is one of the most emblematic works of the Louvre. Liberty Leading the People, Delacroix’s masterpiece, left its location in one of the large red rooms of the Parisian museum on Wednesday September 20 for restoration. The painting of the topless woman brandishing the French flag on a barricade in the middle of insurgents in the heart of Paris is under restoration until spring 2024 and will be temporarily replaced by the painting which was located just opposite, Soulful Womenby Ary Scheffer, dated 1827.

Liberty Leading the People was produced by Delacroix (1798-1863) in 1830, the year of the fall of King Charles X and the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe I^er. An allegorical work inspired by the Three Glorious Revolution in France, this large-format oil on canvas (3.25 meters by 2.60 meters) is usually exhibited alongside The Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders and of The Death of Sardanapalus, Delacroix’s two greatest paintings. The latter itself had been under restoration for ten months and should return to its location on September 27, according to the Louvre Museum.

“Longly prepared in advance by x-rays and analyses” of the canvas, the restoration of Liberty Leading the People intervenes “as part of a major restoration campaign launched in 2019 for the large formats of the 19th^e century “, the director of the paintings department at the Louvre, Sébastien Allard, told Agence France-Presse. To restore its shine to the painting, “the oxidized varnishes which have become yellow which alter the blue-white-red chromatic range of Freedom must in particular be removed using solvents »he clarified.

Since 2015, more than two hundred restorations, some of which are large-scale, have been carried out by the Louvre Museum. La Belle Ferronnièreby Leonardo da Vinci (2015), The Unfortunate Motherby Constance Mayer-Lamartinière (2022), The Women of Algiers (2022) and Scenes from the Scio macres (2020), by Eugène Delacroix, The Venus of Pardoby Titian (2016), and The poet’s inspirationby Nicolas Poussin (2019) have also been restored.