Eugène Delacroix's masterpiece will be restored. It will not be on view until spring 2024

Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix ’s greatest masterpiece preserved at the Louvre, will be restored. The painting has been removed from the wall of the Paris museum for a restoration that is scheduled to last until spring 2024. Painted between September and December 1830, it depicts a bare-breasted woman among the insurgents and on a barricade in central Paris holding the red-white-and-blue flag.

The work has become among the most iconic as a symbol of the struggle for human rights. Delacroix in fact takes sides here politically, celebrating the revolt of the people against the reactionary policies of Charles X, King of France who succeeded Louis XVIII.

The restoration of Delacroix’s masterpiece is part of a major restoration campaign launched in 2019 for large 19th-century formats, as Sébastien Allard, director of the Louvre’s painting department, pointed out to Agence France-Presse. It is necessary to remove, he explained, with solvents in particular the oxidized and yellowed varnishes that alter the blue-white-red color range of the Liberty.

In its place, the Louvre will place Les Femmes souliotes by Ary Scheffer.

Pictured: Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leads the People (1830; oil on canvas, 260 x 325 cm; Paris, Louvre)

Eugène Delacroix's masterpiece will be restored. It will not be on view until spring 2024

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