2023-09-20 20:31:37
We will have to wait until spring 2024 to see “Liberty Leading the People” again within the walls of the Louvre. The famous painting by Delacroix (1798-1863) was removed this Wednesday with great care from its walls at the museum for restoration. It will be temporarily replaced by the work which was located just opposite, “Les Femmes souliotes” by Ary Scheffer (1827).
The topless woman, brandishing the blue-white-red flag on a barricade and in the middle of insurgents, in the heart of Paris, was made in 1830, the year of the fall of King Charles of Louis-Philippe I. “This allegory painted by Delacroix is also one of the most famous images in the world. Its much-awaited restoration will restore all its beauty,” declared the president and director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars.
A work inspired by the Three Glorious Revolutions in France in 1830, this large-format oil on canvas (3.25 m by 2.60 m) is usually exhibited in one of the large red rooms of the Louvre alongside “La Prize of Constantinople by the Crusaders” and “The Death of Sardanapalus”, Delacroix’s two greatest paintings. Restored for ten months, “The Death of Sardanapalus” should return to its location on September 27, according to the Louvre museum.
From September 20, the Mollien room (Denon wing) will be closed to the public for a week in preparation for the reinstallation of “The Death of Sardanapale” whose restoration was completed this summer. We thank you for your understanding. ⚠️
???? Come and discover the… pic.twitter.com/8NysOtiZ5Z
— Louvre Museum (@MuseeLouvre) September 19, 2023
Major restoration campaign launched in 2019
“Long prepared in advance by x-rays and analyses” of the canvas, the restoration of “Liberty Leading the People” takes place “as part of a major restoration campaign launched in 2019 for the large formats of the 19th century”, a specified the director of the paintings department of the Louvre, Sébastien Allard. To restore its shine to the painting, “the oxidized varnishes which have become yellow which alter the blue-white-red chromatic range of Liberty must in particular be lightened”, he specified.
Since 2015, more than 200 restorations, some of which are large-scale, have been carried out by the Louvre museum from “La Belle Ferronnière” by Leonardo da Vinci (2015) to “La Mère infortunée” by Constance Mayer-Lamartinière (2022). “The Women of Algiers” (2022) and “Scenes of the Massacres of Scio” (2020) by Eugène Delacroix, as well as “The Venus of Pardo” by Titian (2016) or “The Inspiration of the Poet” by Nicolas Poussin (2019) have also been restored.
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