  About the Artwork
  
  
  This original plaster relief, Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (also known as The Marseillaise, the famous rousing rallying song Rouget de l'Isle composed for this event and which remains the French national anthem), depicts one of the most familiar and renowned subjects in French nineteenth-century sculpture. The great sculptor Francois Rude received a commission for an enormous relief - twelve meters high - from the government of King Louis-Philippe for placement on the monumental Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. The subject commemorates the moment in 1792 when France's first citizen army rose up in unison against the threatened invasion of the Prussian and Austrian coalition, which sought to reverse the French Revolution and restore the deposed Louis XVI. King Louis-Philippe's commission of Rude's sculpture in 1833 significantly places his celebration of the French Revolution over his own successful but unpopular July Monarchy Revolution of 1830.

Rude's original maquette (or preparatory model) closely compares in its one-meter height and animated energetic modeling to related plaster models by his contemporaries Antoine Etex and Jean-Pierre Cortot for reliefs on the same monument (Paris, musee des Arts Decoratifs).
  
  
  Title
  Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (The Marseillaise)
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1835
  
  Artist
  François Rude
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1784-1855
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  French
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Original plaster model
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 42 × 24 1/2 × 7 inches (106.7 × 62.2 × 17.8 cm)
  Framed: 51 1/2 × 36 1/2 × 7 inches (130.8 × 92.7 × 17.8 cm)
  Including base (depth including bracket mount): 10 1/2 inches (26.7 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Sculpture
  
  
  Department
  European Sculpture and Dec Arts
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  2001.67
  
  
  Copyright
  This work is in the public domain.
