Allégorie de la Libération de lEsclavage ca. 1848 Anonymous, French School, 19th Century The impulse to memorialize pivotal moments in history is one of the defining facets of nineteenth-century art. In this terracotta, the artist undertook the challenge of commemorating the liberation of an entire people from slavery, distilling the culminating event - the abolition of 1848 - in an allegorical two-figure group. Together Liberty and the Black man perform the narrative of French munificence that was popular in the second half of the nineteenth century. Today, the view of emancipation seeks to acknowledge the active role played by enslaved people in achieving their own freedom, in sharp contrast to the allegorical trope of the white nation states largesse seen here.. Allégorie de la Libération de lEsclavage. Anonymous, French School, 19th Century (French, 1800-1899). French. ca. 1848. Terracotta. Sculpture