"The Maid of Orléans" by Jan Matejko

Joan of Arc rides with the royal procession towards Reims Cathedral, where Charles VII is about to be crowned. It is July 1429, following victory over the English. Matejko painted the scene in 1886. Measuring 973 by 484 centimetres, it is his largest painting.

Joan carries a banner on which the image of God is partly concealed. She looks towards Saint Margaret, Saint Catherine and the Archangel Michael, figures associated with her visions. Beside her, a boy carries a burning torch. It foreshadows her death at the stake, although the procession is still on its way to the royal ceremony.

Matejko brought together different moments in history. Among the participants is an archbishop who took office twenty years after Joan’s death and conducted her rehabilitation trial. Beneath the canopy he placed a “group of betrayal”: the king who failed to help her during her trial, Marie of Anjou, who was absent from the coronation, and Agnès Sorel, who arrived at court fifteen years later. This is not a literal record of a single event. The triumphal procession already carries hints of Joan’s abandonment and death.