Joan of Arc Being Interrogated by the Cardinal of Winchester (1824)

Paul Delaroche: Joan of Arc Being Interrogated by the Cardinal of Winchester

After attending the coronation of Charles VII, which her bravery had helped to bring about, Joan of Arc was captured and sold to the English in 1430. She was tried in Rouen for sorcery and idolatry and burned at the stake. Delaroche's painting is set in a Rouen prison where Henry Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester is trying to coerce her confession. No source has been found to confirm that such a private meeting between Cardinal Beaufort and Joan ever took place, but Delaroche clearly contrived this encounter to highlight the anti-English aspect of the story.

This painting exemplifies the stylistic changes that Delaroche and others brought about in the painting of history subjects from the middle of the 1820s. By contrast with the earlier “troubadour” style, with its abundance of detail and almost miniaturist technique, Delaroche has limited his reconstruction of the scene to a few telling details. There is still a high degree of realism, but the dramatic impact is achieved primarily through lighting, gesture, and physiognomy. The idealization characteristic of “troubadour” painting has also been consciously tempered, a fact that was noted by a contemporary critic. The fierce profile and angularity of the figure of the Cardinal creates a dramatic contrast with the shrinking but stalwart Joan who lies sick on a bed of straw. The Cardinal's index finger resting on his knee has been interpreted as pointing to hell, while Joan's manacled hands are in a gesture of prayer. The historic import of the scene is stressed through the inclusion of the scribe in the background. Delaroche's imprisoned Joan had many secular counterparts in Romantic painting, but she also recalls the Baroque tradition of depicting female saints.

The original, very large (108 x 84 1/2 inches) canvas was exhibited at the 1824 Salon where it attracted a great deal of notice. Thiers wrote that Delaroche "was faithful in costume, in national character; he was above all true, energetic, even in expression. This is, without contradiction, one of the history paintings which possesses the most of the character of the times and places they represent." Delaroche, like many nineteenth-century painters, painted reduced versions of his most successful compositions. [Matthiesen Gallery]