The female symbol of the French republic and French revolutionary and martial ardor. The figure of Marianne is always depicted as wearing a Phrygian bonnet, such as that worn by freed slaves in Greece, as a symbol of republicanism. The figure is often depicted carrying a revolutionary pike, such as the one that held aloft the head of the commander of the Bastille on July 14, 1789; or a gun. At the end of 1792, France’s parliament, the Convention, decreed that the seal of France should include this female liberty figure. Marianne was depicted leading representatives of various classes of the people as they fought on the barricades in Eugene Delacroix’s famous painting, Liberty Leading the People, which he painted to celebrate the French July Revolution of 1830. In 1889 at the centennial of the Revolution, when the Marseillaise became the French national anthem, and July 14, the day on which the Bastille fell, became France’s national holiday, representations of Marianne were put in place on Paris’ Place de la Republic and Place de la Nation. During World War I, Marianne was depicted in a number of patriotic poses: resolute, warlike, or motherly. As a young woman she greeted her suitor and hero, Uncle Sam, when the United States entered the war in 1917. After the end of the war she soberly commemorated the dead. Her image was banned by the antirepublican and collaborationist Vichy regime (1940—1944) but reappeared alongside General Charles De Gaulle on Free French posters.
Liberty Leading the People, by Eugene Delacroix (1798—1863).
