This print depicts the Third Estate—represented by the peasant at the rear of the chariot, the worker leading the horse, and the merchant driving—delivering to the National Assembly a petition listing "abuses" to be remedied.
In this watercolor of the Festival of the Supreme Being, we see a procession that includes a woman wearing a Phrygian cap paraded past a statue of Hercules holding two smaller statues of Liberty and Equality, towards a Liberty tree, atop the hill. In…
Many refractory clergy left France to join other detractors, as this print shows, or wishfully encourages. However, this is an ambiguous image, which leaves open the possibility that rather than joining foreign monarchies, the clergy are crossing the…
Although the revolutionaries long regarded the Pope as an enemy, their anger was stoked significantly by the papal decision to decree as unacceptable the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This decision, hardly unexpected given the way that the…
Of particular interest in this caricature of refractory clergy here are the long noses, traditionally used to caricature Jews, that suggest the refractory clergy were not of the people. This image shows resistant clergy marching in their last…
To contemporaries who subscribed to the Enlightenment, the term "reason" was to be contrasted to superstition. Even though Christians, too, believed in reason, they also wanted to make room for the possibility of God’s intervention, particularly in…
