Washington Crossing the Delaware

Washington stands tall and resolute in the prow of a boat as his men row through the ice-choked Delaware at dawn, the flag straining behind him, the crossing that turned the Revolution on Christmas night of 1776. Emanuel Leutze painted the scene decades later in Germany as a stirring patriotic epic, and though its details are famously unhistorical - the flag, the pose, the very boat - its heroic drama proved irresistible. Now in the Metropolitan Museum, Washington Crossing the Delaware is among the most reproduced and beloved images in American history.