Marianne is the famed feminine emblem of France. She has been described as a version of Lady Liberty, and she is usually depicted wearing a phyrygian cap and Grecian robes usually over one shoulder. This capped female allegory was first used in France at the time of the Revolution to symbolize Liberty.
How she got to be called Marianne is uncertain. Each French president selects a Marianne image for use during his presidency. Some images of my 2+ pages of Marianne, many obtained from department store grab bags, no doubt. I assembled them over time without even trying! Pas de probleme!
I decided to try to make sense of the various versions of Marianne in my France collection. Searching online for useful articles, I found:
- this post in French contains several images of Marianne stamps through the years.
- this post contains a handy graphic that I've included below:
My second page of Mariannes, all albumized though not in chronological order. As I add more denominations to my collection, these may move around a bit on the page. To try to bring order to chaos, I added small bleu pieces of Post-it notes with their release years in pencil:
UPDATE: France released a new Marianne in green in November, 2023 designed by Olivier Balez with green leaves in her flowing hair, intended to draw attention to the climate crisis.
This one is a bit of a mystery. An undenominated Marianne that defied albumizing. More research needed:
It's actually a 1993 self-adhesive booklet stamp: Yvert catalogue 2806. Scott catalogue 2340.
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