(Paris) Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix was removed on Wednesday with infinite precautions from its walls at the Louvre Museum for a restoration which should last until spring 2024, noted AFP.
The topless woman, brandishing the blue-white-red flag on a barricade and among insurgents, in the heart of Paris, was painted by Delacroix (1798-1863) in 1830, the year of the fall of King Charles and the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe Ier.
“This allegory painted by Delacroix is also one of the most famous images in the world. Its much-awaited restoration will restore all its beauty,” declared the president and director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, in a press release.
A work inspired by the Three Glorious Revolutions in France in 1830, this large-format oil on canvas (3.25 m by 2.60 m) is usually exhibited in one of the large red rooms of the Louvre alongside The Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders and of The death of SardanapalusDelacroix’s two greatest paintings.
Restored for 10 months, The death of Sardanapalus 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 large formats of the 19the century,” the director of the paintings department at the Louvre, Sébastien Allard, told AFP.
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 reduced,” he said.
The table will be temporarily replaced by the table which was located directly opposite, Soulful Women by Ary Scheffer (1827).
Since 2015, more than 200 restorations, some of which are large-scale, have been carried out by the Louvre museum in La Belle Ferronnière from Leonardo da Vinci (2015) to The Unfortunate Mother by Constance Mayer-Lamartinière (2022).
The Women of Algiers (2022) and Scenes from the Scio massacres (2020) by Eugène Delacroix, as well as The Venus of Pardo by Titian (2016) or The poet’s inspiration by Nicolas Poussin (2019) have also been restored.