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Joan of Arc in Prison
  • Date: 1825
  • Object Type: Painting
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Image size: 48.1 x 37.8 cm
  • Object size: 70 x 61 x 9 cm
  • Inv: P300
  • Location: West Gallery II
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  • A replica of a much larger picture (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts) exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824. Joan of Arc (1412-31) was burned as a heretic at Rouen on 30 May 1431 after five months of interrogation. She had raised the siege of Orléans by the English and conducted Charles VII to his coronation at Rheims. Although Delaroche shows Henry Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester (d.1447), threatening Joan with eternal damnation, she was actually interrogated by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, and there is no evidence that an encounter with Beaufort ever took place. By showing Beaufort pointing down to Hell to threaten Joan with eternal damnation, Delaroche no doubt recalled the terrible irony that on his own deathbed Beaufort refused to lift his hand to acknowledge his hope of ‘Heaven’s bliss’ ('Henry VI', Part II, III, iii). The subject of Joan of Arc had strong royalist and nationalist associations in France after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815. A preparatory sketch for the Rouen painting is in the Wallace Collection (P604).