This impressive bronze equestrian sculpture of 15th century French patriot and martyr Joan of Arc (1411–1431). Created by the eminent artist and art patron Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973), the piece was dedicated in 1915.
Jeanne La Pucelle, later known as Joan of Arc, was a peasant maiden said to have been divinely inspired to help liberate the French from English rule. Through her determination, she was able to gain an audience with the Dauphin of France, later to be King Charles VII, at the time when the city of Orleans was under siege. Charles appointed her commander-in-chief of a small provisional army, which under her inspired command forced the English to withdraw in 1429. With the siege lifted, the Dauphin was crowned in Reims Cathedral, with Joan seated in the place of honor next to him.
Though a popular figure, Joan was restrained by the new King from marching on Paris. In 1430, while conducting an unofficial campaign, she was captured by Burgundian soldiers at Compiegne and sold to the English, who charged her with witchcraft and heresy. She was subjected to a long trial in a French ecclesiastical and was eventually found guilty and condemned to death. On May 31, 1431, she was burned at the stake. Twenty years later an investigation into Joan’s trial proceedings led to the annulment of her sentence. On May 16, 1920, nearly 500 years later, Jeanne la Pucelle was canonized as Saint Joan by Pope Benedict XV.
How was this created?
In New York, a prominent group of citizens formed a Joan of Arc monument committee in 1909. Their efforts coincided with those of a young sculptor, Anna Hyatt Huntington, to create a sculpture of Joan. Her first version, in which she emphasized “the spiritual rather than the warlike point of view,” was submitted to the prestigious Salon in Paris. It received an honorable mention from the jury, nevertheless skeptical that such an accomplished work of art could have been made solely by a woman.
The New York monument committee, headed by J. Sanford Saltus, was so impressed by her work, that they awarded her the commission. Architect John van Pelt was retained to design the pedestal, which is made of Mohegan granite composed of Gothic-style blind arches, decorated with coats of arms. A few limestone blocks from the tower in Rouen where Joan of Arc had been imprisoned were incorporated into the base. Van Pelt situated the monument at the top of the steps in the park island at 93rd Street and Riverside and had planted a screen of trees to disguise the buildings.
Huntington’s version is both heroic and infused with naturalistic detail. For Joan’s armor, she conducted research at the arms and armory division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the refinement of the equine anatomy was based on a horse borrowed from the fire department of her native town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Her niece posed astride a barrel, as she modeled the figure, first nude, then in costume.
On December 6, 1915, the sculpture, the first commemorative sculptor of a woman in New York City, was unveiled in an elaborate ceremony. It included a military band and French Ambassador Jean J. Jusserand and Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison were among those selected to pull the cord that released the shroud. Huntington had a long and illustrious career and sculpted the statue of the Cuban patriot, José Martí (1965), which stands at Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. Following World War I, replicas of the Joan of Arc sculpture were placed in 1921 in Gloucester, Blois, France, and Quebec City, Canada, and in 1926 an additional replica was installed in front of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, San Francisco.
