Under the monarchy, the king was the country’s symbolic center. Removing him and establishing a republic made necessary not only a new constitution but also a new set of symbols. Here the revolutionaries transformed "Liberty" into "the Republic."…
Male and female sans–culottes were supposed to embody frugality, thrift, hard work, and, above all, honest devotion—whether to pets, the nation, or fellow comrades.
This cartoon mocks the distinction between active and passive citizens. Many revolutionaries hated this difference, essentially dividing those with property from those without. The propertied (active) were the only ones who could participate in the…
The Queen, never popular to begin with in France, also bore the brunt of popular anger in 1792, as seen in images of the King and Queen as animals. This reversal from old regime portrayals of the monarchy is made more remarkable by the fact that…
Not uncommonly, revolutionary prints invoked excretory humor directed toward those priests who would not swear allegiance to the Revolution. Revolutionaries eliminated on their enemies; the latter might also receive enemas. Of course, in a world of…
This hand–tinted engraving depicts the storming of the Tuileries Palace by what appear to be small groups of well–organized soldiers of the Marseilles National Guard. The positive image of the sans–culottes is reinforced by commentaries that…
The physical eviction of the black–robed magistrates in front of a female audience has a somewhat ambiguous message. On the one hand, noting the female figure on the dias in the back, this image could suggest excessive female authority at court,…
Like the preceding image, this engraving reveals the aftermath of the seizure of the Bastille. Here the crowd parades the severed head of the offial, Foulon.
This engraving depicts the King, his wife, and his children meeting at half–past midnight on 21 June 1791, about to board a carriage in which they will flee secretly from Paris toward the border. The King and Queen were poorly disguised as servants…
These images, all engraved and widely circulated years after the event, show four different moments of the arrest. Each successive image renders the scene increasingly dramatic. The first, a woodcut executed shortly after the event, shows the postman…
