Browse Items (256 total)

An idealized portrait of Marie Antoinette at the moment of death. Unlike the pale, aged woman the contemporaries observed, this later print memorialized a beautiful, absolutely pure, woman. While in life she had been assailed as a lesbian, a…

This event, which may be entirely apocryphal, and is shown in an image that surely dates from much after the Revolution, relates to the vision of the weakness of Louis and the strength of Marie Antoinette.

From an English periodical of 1819, this antirevolutionary print portrays the sans–culottes as drunkards anxious to destroy by fire, gallows, and guillotine rather than to work for their own good. The image satirizes the idea of sans–culotte…

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."…

The fattened clergyman and the well–bedecked nobleman go off unbothered while the figure in the foreground assesses carefully the value of a commoner. This complex image also includes a pig—likely a symbol for Louis XVI—with the cleric and the noble.…

The remainder of the text on this image reads: Emperor of the French, King of Italy, and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. The military flags make clear the connection between military conquest and imperial glory.

In this propagandistic allegorical engraving, Napoleon saves the female figure of France from the abyss to which she has been led by "revolutionary fanaticism." The figure of fanaticism is armed to the teeth with "the daggers of party spirit" and…

Upon returning to City Hall, the now heavily armed crowd stormed that building as well, arresting the "Provost of Markets" (or mayor) and his son–in–law, another municipal official. Both men were beheaded and their severed heads were placed on pikes…

This depiction of a sugar plantation in Saint Domingue emphasizes the grinding mill and refining vats. An overseer with a gun supervises the slave labor. By 1789 Saint Domingue excelled at sugar production, outpacing other French colonies and the…

This amazingly rich sketch by Jacques–Louis David is one of the most famous works from the French revolutionary era. The thrust of the bodies together and toward the center stand for unity. The spectators, including children at the top right, all…