Joan of Arc listening to her voices

Henri Chapu was a 19th-century French sculptor, engraver and watercolorist. He won the Prix de Rome in 1855, the Medal of Honor at the 1875 Salon, and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1880. In 1872, he presented the marble Jeanne d'Arc écoutant les voix at the Salon, which was an immediate success. In the aftermath of the War with Prussia, which saw the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, the young Lorraine became a symbol of a call to revolt in a divided country. Henri Chapu's intimate composition, simple in its treatment of volume, sits on folded legs, hands clasped in prayer, evoking the Virgin of humility. In her peasant garb, we are far from the image of a warlike Joan of Arc. Chapu's Joan of Arc was a phenomenal popular success, and was distributed in large numbers and in a variety of materials: bronze, terracotta, plaster or bisque. This tinted plaster print is a testimony to Barbédienne's production. Throughout the 19th century, Jeanne was a national emblem. She embodied the hope of France's recovery, after the revolutionary episode and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870.