, an anti-French cartoon '', 1830, by
Eugène Delacroix, with the modern French
national personification Marianne|alt=A bare-breasted woman leads a revolutionary army over a barricade, holding aloft a French flag The medieval republics, mostly in Italy, greatly valued their liberty, and often use the word, but produce very few direct personifications. One exception, showing just the cap of liberty between daggers, a copy of coins by the assassins of
Julius Caesar, featured on a medal struck by
Lorenzino de' Medici to commemorate his assassination of his cousin
Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence in 1547. Liberty featured in
emblem books, usually with her cap; the most popular, the
Iconologia of
Cesare Ripa, showed the cap held on a pole by the 1611 edition. With the rise of
nationalism and new states, many nationalist personifications included a strong element of liberty, perhaps culminating in the
Statue of Liberty. The long poem
Liberty by the Scottish
James Thomson (1734), is a lengthy
monologue spoken by the "Goddess of Liberty", "characterized as British Liberty", describing her travels through the ancient world, and then English and British history, before the resolution of the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 confirms her position there. Thomson also wrote the lyrics for
Rule Britannia, and the two personifications were often combined as a personified "British Liberty". A large monument, originally called the "Column of British Liberty", now usually just the "Column to Liberty", was begun in the 1750s on his
Gibside estate outside
Newcastle-on-Tyne by the hugely wealthy Sir
George Bowes, reflecting his
Whig politics. Set at the top of a steep hillock, the monument itself is taller than
Nelson's Column in London, and topped by a bronze female figure, originally
gilded, carrying a cap of liberty on a pole. In other images, she took the seated form already very familiar from the British copper coinage, where
Britannia had first appeared in 1672, with shield but carrying the cap on a rod as a
liberty pole, rather than her usual
trident. In the run up to the
American War of Independence, this conflated figure of Britannia/Liberty was attractive to American colonists agitating for the full set of British civil rights, and from 1770 some American newspapers adopted her for their masthead. When war broke out, the Britannia element quickly disappeared, but a classical-looking Liberty still appealed, and was now sometimes just labelled "America". In the 1790s
Columbia, who had been sometimes present in literature for some decades, emerged as a common name for this figure. Her position was cemented by the popular song
Hail, Columbia (1798). By the time of the
French Revolution the modern type of imagery was well-established, and the French figure acquired the name of
Marianne from 1792. Unlike her predecessors, she normally wore the
cap of Liberty on her head, rather than carrying it on a pole or lance. In 1793 the
Notre Dame de Paris cathedral was turned into a "
Temple of Reason" and, for a brief time, the Goddess of Liberty replaced the
Virgin Mary on several altars. The
Great Seal of France, applied to the official copies of legislation, had a Marianne with Phrygian cap of liberty from 1792, until she was replaced the next year by a
Hercules after
Jacques-Louis David. A standing Liberty, with
fasces and cap on a pole, was on the seal of Napoleon's
French Consulate, before being replaced by his head. Liberty returned to the seal with the
French Second Republic in 1848, seated amid symbols of agriculture and industry, designed by
Jacques-Jean Barre. She carries
fasces on her lap, now wears a
radiant crown with seven spikes or rays, and leans on a
rudder. After a gap with the
Second French Empire, a version of the 1848 design was used by the
French Third Republic and under subsequent republics to the present day. The radiant crown, never used in antiquity for Libertas (but for the sun god
Sol Invictus and some later emperors), was adopted by
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi for the
Statue of Liberty. This was conceived in the 1860s, under the French Second Republic, when Liberty no longer featured on the seal or in French official
iconography. The Great Seal's rudder was another original borrowing from classical iconography. In Roman art it (called a
gubernaculum) was the usual attribute of
Fortuna, or "Lady Luck", representing her control of the changeable fortunes of life. As well as such dignified representations, all these figures very frequently figured in the
political cartoons that were becoming extremely popular in all the countries concerned over this period. The
Napoleonic Wars produced a particular outpouring of cartoons on all sides. In the 19th century various
national personifications took on this form, some wearing the cap of liberty. The
Dutch Maiden, accompanied by the
Leo Belgicus became the official symbol of the
Batavian Republic established after the French occupied the
Netherlands. == Depictions in the United States ==