Art: New Marianne

(2 of 2)

1) Marianne was the name and password of a Republican secret society formed in 1852 immediately after Louis Napoléon's coup d'état. Bonapartists referred to the Republican ideal as Marianne.

2) Further researches trace Marianne as a symbol of republican institutions as far back as the first revolution of 1789.

3) One Juan de Mariana (1532-1624) in a Latin treatise defined circumstances in which it is proper to assassinate a tyrannical prince. Following the assassination of spade-bearded Henri IV in 1610, Mariana's treatise was publicly burnt in Paris.

An independent theory looks to Pierre de Marivaux's interminable novel Marianne, published in instalments from 1731 to 1742. There was nothing notably republican about Marivaux's Marianne but the book was a best-seller in the years when the revolution was breeding. French critics indignantly accused England's Samuel Richardson of imitation when the first numbers of Clarissa Harlowe appeared in 1747.