collective work, of the community.
The Phrygian Cap
But the artists, especially the painters of historical
events, following the models of antiquity, had the custom of using a
different cap, one which covered the nape of the neck and the ears --
the Phrygian cap. This cap competed with the red one in images, took
on the latter’s special symbolic meaning and ended by supplanting
it. The Phrygian cap became synonymous with republican liberty.
The image of "Liberty" in Roman antiquity carried
at the end of a pike a conical hat that covered the head of a freed
slave. It is a cap similar to what the common people of the eighteenth
century wore and, in particular, the conquerors of the Bastille. Often
it had a red color. At the theater, it went along with Janot, the man
of the people in farces. It became, according to the Révolutions
de Paris, "the symbol of the liberation from all servitudes,
the sign for unification of all the enemies of despotism.
Attribute of the bishop, it symbolizes the clergy. It
was used more than the miter or the cross, emblem of the lower clergy.