A first close encounter with Joan of Arc…

Jeanne d’Arc. Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The very first time I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City I was there in the best of circumstances I can imagine. I was dropped off there in the morning by my boyfriend; and he told me he would pick me up sometime in the late afternoon.

Therefore, I was alone and left free to explore that amazing museum all by myself with no one else’s conflicting desires to interfere with my wandering through the collections, and no distraction of any kind by anyone else for quite a few hours.

I don’t remember a whole lot about what I did that day. I started by strolling through the antiquities. I probably spent a fair amount of time in the medieval section looking at the richly colorful paintings and sculptures. I think I took a lunch break in the café on the main floor. Then I went upstairs and began wandering through the galleries of European paintings.

When I rounded a corner and saw the painting you see above I stopped, and stood there for a long time. This painting of Joan of Arc at the moment she is being visited by the Archangel Michael and two female saints really spoke to me.

The description on Wikipedia says that this painting shows Joan at the moment that these spirits are “rousing her to fight the English invaders in the Hundred Years War,” and describes it as a moment of “spiritual awakening.”

To me it looks more like a moment of profound fear.

I mean, put yourself in the place of this simple country girl–she was in her early teens, between 13 and 15 years old–when these heavenly apparitions quite suddenly appeared in her parents’ garden and instructed her to undertake an incredibly dangerous mission that everyone, but everyone, was going to think was insane.

Wouldn’t you be afraid?

I have never forgotten this painting and though I haven’t spent all that much time thinking about Joan of Arc in the years since, when I moved to northeastern France, not too far from where she was born and raised, I began to idly think about taking a day trip sometime to see that place.

It was ten years before this idle thought became a reality, last week. I will be writing about that experience soon in the “Adventures in France” part of my Substack.

But for now I thought I would just share this bit of background on my interest in Joan of Arc. I can see already that a wonderfully intriguing “rabbit hole” of discovery awaits me.

It’s an incredible story, it really is. Stay tuned!

Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France. You can also find her writing at Searching for Home.