Fall of the Bastille

A central moment from the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, is depicted in this colored print of a 1793 painting by Charles Thévenin. The insurgents have won the battle and are arresting the governor of the prison; in the next moments, they will cut off his head and parade it on a pike. The artist expresses his ambivalence about the violence by showing an insurgent in the right foreground brutally killing one of the defenders even though the battle is over. (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.)