Germania

This towering figure was painted in a few weeks in the spring of 1848, one of the most hopeful moments in German history. Revolutions were sweeping Europe, and for the first time an elected all-German parliament gathered in St Paul's Church in Frankfurt to try to build a single free nation out of dozens of separate states. Philipp Veit and his fellow artists ran up this five-metre Germania in such haste that they hung her, unprimed, over the church organ behind the speakers. Read her like a banner. She holds the black, red and gold flag that is still Germany's today, an olive branch and sword for peace backed by strength, and the broken chains of freedom at her feet. The parliament beneath her failed within a year, its offer of a crown refused, but the painting survived and was carried off to Nuremberg, where it still hangs.