- CountryFrance
- Town:Mirecourt/Vosges
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Year of creation:1903
- Rider(s):Jeanne d'Arc
(ca. 1412– 1431) nicknamed ‘The Maid of Orléans’ is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. Jeanne d’Arc, a peasant girl, born in eastern France, asserted that she had visions from God that instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination. The Dauphin Charles sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. She then led the French army to several important victories, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII in Reims, thus settling the disputed succession to the throne.
The Burgundians captured Jeanne d’Arc a few months later and sold her to the English. An ecclesiastical court tried her with as result that she was burned at the stake, when she was only 19 years old. Twenty-five years after the execution, Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, pronounced her innocent and declared her a martyr. She was canonized in 1920. Along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux, she is one of thepatron saints of France.
- Sculptor(s):Frémiet, Emmanuel
(1824 –1910) was a French sculptor. He was a so called animalier: a sculptor of animals. He became famous for his sculpture of Joan of Arc in Paris.
He produced his equestrian statue of Napoleon I in 1868, and of Louis d’Orleans of 1869 (at the Château de Pierrefonds) and in 1874 the first equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, erected in the Place des Pyramides, Paris; this he afterwards (1889) replaced with another version. In the meanwhile he had exhibited his “Gorilla Carrying off a Woman” which won him a medal of honour at the Salon of 1887. Although praised in its time, this work now evokes ridicule from some observers for its depiction of a gorilla abducting a nude woman, presumably with the intention of raping her. Accordingly, this act has caught the public’s imagination, as witnessed by the repeated popularity of the King Kong theme. Frémiet also executed the equestrian statue of Velasquez for the Jardin de l’Infante at the Louvre. Named an Officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1878, he became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1892, and succeeded Antoine-Louis Barye as professor of animal drawing at the Natural History Museum of Paris. Emmanuel Frémiet died in Paris and was buried in the Cimetière de Louveciennes. - Original in:Paris
See original.
Photographer unknown
