During the French Revolution of 1830, insurgents raised some four thousand barricades. Afterward, lithographs of the street fighting flowed from the presses, creating the barricade's first imagery. This book documents the changing political valence of the revolutionary ideals associated with the barricade in France from 1830 to 1852.

The Revolution Takes Form coordinates the political reality of the barricade with the divergent ways in which its image gave shape to the period's conceptions of class, revolution, and urban space. Engaging the instability of the barricade, art historian Jordan Marc Rose focuses on five politically charged works of art: Eug