In July 1830 Parisians rose up and overthrew King Charles X in three days. Delacroix painted it that same year. Liberty, a woman in a Phrygian cap, strides over the barricade with the French tricolor and a musket.

She is both an allegory and a real woman of the streets. Around her are a boy with two pistols, a worker with a saber, a man in a top hat who may be Delacroix himself. The painting has been an emblem of France ever since.