Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII

Ingres finished the picture in eighteen fifty four, when he was seventy four, and signed it at the lower left. He treated it as a devotional image as much as a history painting. The figure is frontal and still, the armour polished so brightly that the reflections are painted with the care of a goldsmith. Look at the objects on the altar, the chalice, the book and the jewelled crown, and at the embroidered vestment of the chaplain: every surface is described with a precision that owes as much to Flemish primitives as to Raphael. Ingres, as usual in his late years, worked with assistants on the accessory parts, but the composition and the head of Joan are his.

The painting was commissioned by the state in eighteen fifty one, at a moment when Joan of Arc was becoming a national heroine for republicans and monarchists alike. It was exhibited at Orléans in eighteen fifty four for the city's festival of Joan and then at the Exposition Universelle of eighteen fifty five. Its image of Joan as a calm, armoured saint became the standard one, reproduced in prints and schoolbooks for a century.

Did You Know? Ingres was seventy four when he finished the picture, and he had it shown first in Orléans, the city Joan had liberated, for the festival held in her honour.