Images

A 1785 portrait of Baronne de Crussol Florensac by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. The striking red dress and hat are rendered using cochineal pigment. (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse)

Reconstruction of the well that Joan of Arc is believed to have used to get off her horse in Chinon on March 6th 1429 as she was heading to meet King Charles VII of France.

A prickly pear cactus (nopal) with the parasite insect Dactylopius coccus which is used to make cochineal dye.

An 18th-century illustration showing a Mesoamerican using the traditional method of collecting insects to make the prized cochineal dye. (The Newberry Library)

What is the Third Estate? was a seminal pamphlet written by Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sièyes (1748-1836) in the months preceding the Estates-General of 1789. The pamphlet argues that the Third Estate (commoners) constitutes an entire nation itself...

A 19th-century painting by Pedro Lira Rencoret showing the foundation of Santiago de Chile in 1541 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia. (National History Museum, Santiago)

An image illustrating the progression of periods in ancient Japanese civilization from its pre-historic settling by paleolithic migrants from northeast Asia. Through profound domestic evolution and constant international exchange during the...

Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836) as a member of the National Convention during the French Revolution (1789-99), engraving by François Bonneville, 1797. Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris.

Posthumous portrait of French revolutionary leader Antoine Barnave (1761-93) by Victor Cassien, c. 1836.

Antoine Barnave (1761-1793) during his imprisonment in 1792-93, just before his execution. Image by Alexandre Lacauchie, from the Galerie historique de la révolution française (1787-1799), vol. 1, 1849.