(Paris) Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People was taken down 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 I.
“This allegory painted by Delacroix is also one of the most famous images in the world. Its much-awaited restoration will restore all of its beauty,” declared the president and director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, in a press release.
A work inspired by the Three Glorious Revolution 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 La Prize de Constantinople by the Crusaders and The Death of Sardanapalus, Delacroix’s two greatest paintings.
Restored for 10 months, The Death of Sardanapalus is expected to return to its location on September 27, according to the Louvre Museum.
“Long prepared in advance by x-rays and analyses” of the canvas, the restoration of Liberty Leading the People takes place “as part of a major restoration campaign launched in 2019 for the large formats of the 19th century”, specified to AFP the director of the paintings department of the Louvre, Sébastien Allard.
To restore its shine to the painting, “the oxidized varnishes which have become yellow which alter the blue-white-red chromatic range of La Liberté must in particular be lightened”, he specified.
The painting will be temporarily replaced by the painting which was located just opposite, Les Femmes souliotes by Ary Scheffer (1827).
Since 2015, more than 200 restorations, some of which are large-scale, have been carried out by the Louvre museum from La Belle Ferronnière by Leonardo da Vinci (2015) to La Mère infortunée by Constance Mayer-Lamartinière (2022).
The Women of Algiers (2022) and Scenes from the Massacres of Scio (2020) by Eugène Delacroix, as well as The Venus of Pardo by Titian (2016) and The Inspiration of the Poet by Nicolas Poussin (2019) have also been restored.
