This post title is a reference to a random old Broadway song that is maybe to cutesy and punny even for me, and also at odds with the rest of the post, but I couldn’t resist.
I got to meet a NEW JOAN. Well, new to me.
May 30th is Jeanne D’arc’s yarzheit (Yiddish for death anniversary). In 2024, shortly before leaving new York, I took the day to visit a statue of her there. This year I’m in Cincinnati, and I knew there weren’t necessarily any famous statues of Joan in the area. But I did find out there was a bust of her at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and even better, that general admission is free and open to the public. To the museum I went! And here she is in all her tiny glory (this particular bust is just over a foot tall)
Left: Bust of Joan, all white marble, eyes (mostly) closed wearing a helmet Right: The bust, over my shoulder, and me wearing a beige KN95 and a look of awe in my eyes
Looking at pictures online, I was struck by how peaceful this Joan looked. I thought her eyes were closed. But it turns out they are only half-lidded, and I found the effect quite eerie.
Left and Right: Two pictures of the bust of Joan, from increasingly further below her. Why yes, I did crawl around on the ground to take these. Why yes, I am surprised a docent didn’t ask what the hell I was doing.
This sent my mind reeling. What was the artist, Prosper D’Epinay, trying to communicate with this half-lidded stare? Is she in the process of closing her eyes? She’s armored and helmeted, so I doubt she is going to sleep. The plaque on the wall tells us that he was working to capture her sense of inner peace and conviction. I think that’s accomplished to a point. It was my initial impression before I saw the bust in person. But that half lidded stare, almost like she is subtly but judgementally averting her gaze…
Left: A close up side three-quarter view of the bust’s face. Right: The plaque for the bust, which reads: Prosper D’Epinay (French, 1836-1914) Bust of Joan of Arc. 1898. Marble. Gift of Jennifer Emily Adams in honor of Judith Hauser Adams. 2019.80. As a teenager in the early 1400’s, Joan of Arc became a figurehead and then martyr for France at a crucial moment in the Hundred Years War with England. As French *patriotism surged in the late 1800’s, she was invoked anew in literature and art. Prosper D’Epinay maintained sculpture studios in Mauritius, Rome, Paris, and London across a long career that ran from the late 1850’s to the early 1910’s. D’Epinay made this bust in preparation for a **full length standing figure of Joan of Arc, composed in multicolored stone, bronze and ivory, completed in 1901 and now standing in the Cathedral at Reims. Expressing the young woman’s inner peace, deep conviction, and unwavering religious faith were the sculptor’s primary concerns. In our white marble bust, D’Epinay portrays idealized beauty and ascetic simplicity, while reveling in meticulous carving and surface detail. The circa-1900 oak pedestal was acquired with funds provided by the Friends of European Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings.
I think there can be something eerie about people (or representations of people) who give off an air of deep-seated conviction. Conviction, holding to our ideals, and fostering a sense of inner peace from that, is hard work. Certainly some of us have been challenged on those fronts in the last two years as the colonization and genocide in Gaza has escalated and become more visible in social media spaces. Joan of Arc fought in a war against colonization. I think if she were here today, Palestine is one of the places we might find her, casting quiet judgement on those who commit imperialist violence, seeking inner peace in the face of enormous odds, deep seated in her conviction that the Divine desires freedom, and that therefore freedom is possible. In fact, we don’t need Joan of Arc here today, because there are plenty doing just that in Palestine and among other colonized and oppressed populations the world over.
My favorite fact about Joan is that her heart did not burn when she was martyred. The Catholic Church (one of if not the greatest perpetrators of colonization humanity has ever known) cannot recognize her as a martyr, as they martyred her. But she is the patron saint of martyrs. There have been un-numbered martyrs in Palestine. In Sudan. In the Congo. On Turtle Island. But there are also living fighters in these places.
It wasn’t just Joan’s heart that did not burn. It was all of her innards. Her guts. Her insides, metaphorically and figuratively, could be swept into the river like rubbish, but they could not be destroyed, not even by the strongest forces of oppression. This isn’t actually a magical, miraculous fact. Or rather, it is, but the miracle is mundane; innards tend not to burn when someone is murdered on the stake.
So what does this mean? I think it means that the deepest insides of a person or peoples under oppression, the place where we turn for conviction and inner peace, the spirit, cannot be burned away by acts of horrific violence. All these can do is light the fire under those of us who’s eyes are wide open, and inflame us to long for, dream of, and fight to make real a world without power over, but only power within.
I don’t feel a need to end on a lighter note, but I do want to share one more image of Joan, copied from the first recorded depiction of her by the coolest artist I know; My Dad. He gifted this to me after joining me on my trip to the museum.
*Patriotism in any country that has ever been and continues to be a colonizer is always a red flag
**It’s a dream of mine to meet her some day!
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