The Maid in Armor on Horseback (Joan of Arc series: III)

Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel (1850-1913) was a French painter and illustrator best known for his series on Joan of Arc, of which The Maid in Armor on Horseback is the third panel. The series was commissioned for a planned luxury illustrated book on Joan of Arc, and the oil and gold leaf medium reflects the medieval manuscript tradition that Boutet de Monvel was evoking. The Maid in Armor shows Joan mounted and armed, the moment when the peasant girl transforms into the military leader who would lead the French army to victory at Orléans. The stylized figures, the golden backgrounds, and the flattened perspective are all influenced by medieval manuscript illumination.

Boutet de Monvel's Joan of Arc series was one of the most ambitious artistic projects of the early 20th century, combining the medieval revival of the Arts and Crafts movement with the nationalist mythology of Joan of Arc that had been strengthened by the Franco-Prussian War and the Dreyfus Affair. The oil and gold leaf medium connects the series to medieval manuscript tradition, while the stylized composition connects it to the decorative painting of the Art Nouveau period. The result is a hybrid work that is simultaneously medieval and modern.

The Maid in Armor on Horseback is Boutet de Monvel's Joan of Arc at her most triumphant: the peasant girl transformed into a military leader, rendered in oil and gold leaf that evoke medieval manuscript illumination. The gold is not decorative but devotional—Joan is a saint in armor, and the painting treats her with the reverence that her canonization (1920) would eventually confirm.