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Joan of Arc in French Art and Culture (1700-1855), From Satire to Sanctity by Nora M. Heimann

2006; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/art.2006.0082

1934-1539

Kevin J. Harty,

Renaissance Literature and Culture

Reviews ñora M. Heimann,Joan ofArc in FrenchArt and Culture (1700—185$), From Satire to Sanctity. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgare, 2005. Pp. xvi + 215. isbn: 0-7546-5085-5. $99.50. Thanks to the detailed courr records from her trial and subsequent rehabilitation, Joan ofArc's life may well be the most-documented ofanyone who lived before the twentieth-century, but as Professor Heimann's ground-breaking and fascinating study suggests there is still much to be learned about the Maid of Orléans. In five meticulously documented and always insightful chapters, Heimann surveys Joan's treatment at the hands of Voltaire, Schiller, Gois, Delaroche, Michelet, Marie d'Orléans, and Ingres. Supplementing the text ofthis study are sixty black and white plates, each carefully reproduced. Heimann begins with a detailed analysis ofVoltaire's infamous (in its day but now largely ignored) mock epic on Joan. (Joan and Voltaire borh died on 30 May; she, in 1431; he, in 1778.) Ifnorhing else, Volraire's effort proves that it is possible for even a great author to be too clever by half. Originallycirculated in pirared manuscripr form and later in clandestine printed editions, Voltaire's work was 'banned, burned, and decried as poisonously profligate throughour Europe in rhe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries'(13). In one version, Joan loses her virginity by coupling with an ass. But, as Heimann points out, Joan's virginity was an object offetish in her own lifetime by both her supporters and her captors, and Joan's virginity was essential to her role as savior. What Voltaire lampoons is nor Joan, but Catholic-inspired superstition and poppycock. Unlike many of Volraire's contemporaries and early detractors, Heimann has actually read him—carefully—and she offers one ofthe best readings ofan admittedly complex work too readily dismissed, if not banned, in the past as bordering on the obscene or the pornographic. The notoriety ofVoltaire's mock epic inspired Schiller to pen first in 1800 a poem and then in 1801 his more famous stage play aboutJoan, which can rightly lay claim to the distinction ofestablishing the early modern and modern fascination with the life and legend ofla pucelle. In Schiller's hands, Joan's image is transformed from 'a manifestation ofpolitical ideals to an embodimentofromantictragedy '(45). Again, as with herdiscussion ofVoltaire, Heimann offers an insightful close readingofSchiller's play, which despite its importance and influence remains little performed today. Heimann supplements her discussion ofSchiller's play with details about numerous lesser known plays about rhe maid by ninereenth century French dramatists who were clearly influenced by the German playwrighr and about the more well-known ARTHURIANA l6.1 (2006) 104 REVIEWS105 operas by Verdi and Tchaikovsky, each also influenced by Schiller. Joan's admittedly at times conflicting centraliry to French history is the focus of Heimann's discussion of Gois's public monument Joan ofArc in Battle dedicated in the Place de la République in Orléans on 8 May 1804. Crucial to the funding for this work was the support ofNapoleon, who found Joan as useful to his agenda as had the members of the ancien regime and the committees ofthe Revolution to theirs. Indeed,Joan's ability to serve as spokesperson for almost any political agenda explains her conrinued popularity under rhe restored monarchy and in the drama it produced. Although the process of refashioning Joan's iconography to reflect Restorarion sentiments took some time, that iconography soon became evident not only in literary works about Joan bur also in works devoted to het exhibited at the Salon des Beaux-Arts. Indeed, the widespread popularityofJoan's image isattested to by the numbers ofpainrings, plays, books, and poems produced aboutJoan by 1820. Of the paintings, none was more popular or successful than Paul Delaroche's Joan ofArc, Sick, Interrogatedin Prison by the CardinalofWinchester, which was exhibited in the Salon of1824. Delarouche's influence can be seen in subsequent treatments of Joan as diverse as those of the historian Jules Michelet and of the filmmakets Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, and Jacques Riverte. Michelet's Joan and the Joans of Marie d'Orléans and Ingres are the subject of Heimann's final chapter, which discusses the ways...