The Trial of Joan of Arc (Joan of Arc series: VI)

Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel

National Gallery of Art

A young blond person stands in the center of a dimly lit room facing dozens of men in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale skin, though many are in shadow. The central person, Joan of Arc, stands in profile facing our left. She clutches one hand at her chest and the other extends in front of her, fingers arcing up. She has chin-length hair and bangs. Her brow is furrowed and her lips parted. She wears a lapis-blue, high-necked tunic over smoke-gray stockings and pointed black shoes. A metal band encircles her waist and a chain and manacle hang from one of two rings there. The chamber is lined with two rows of seats that extend along the short side to our left and the long wall across from us. A man wearing a white robe and a burnished gold mitre hat and cloak sits in the corner, both arms resting on a high throne. The other men wear clergy’s brown or black and white robes or long garments in slate blue, olive green, tawny brown, charcoal gray, and silvery white. Most wear hats. Four more men sit around a table covered in a grass-green cloth behind Joan, to our right. One man looks down at and writes on a sheet of paper. About half a dozen soldiers wearing silvery helmets and holding spear-topped halberds cluster in the back right corner, beyond the table. A wood stepstool sits closer to us, in front of the table, in the lower right corner. The walls of the chamber are paneled in a rectangular grid of light brown planks over darker wood, and the floor is tiled with small pink rectangles. The artist has signed in the lower right, “M. Boutet de Monvel.”