Saint Joan of Arc by Catholic Art Studio

Saint Joan of Arc

Who they were

A farm girl who heard the voices of saints, led the French army to relieve Orléans at seventeen, and was burned as a heretic at nineteen. She was declared innocent twenty-five years later and a saint in 1920.

Why people ask for them

Patron of France, soldiers, and prisoners. Feast day May 30. Died 1431.

About this drawing

One of the Charcoal Saints: forty-eight portraits drawn to the same sheet — willow charcoal and white chalk on toned paper, half-length, the face and hands finished and the rest left loose — so that any two of them hang together like family. Joan of Arc’s likeness and attributes come from the saint’s own iconography. The drawing hand is an image model working to a written brief; the eye that judged each candidate, sent the weak ones back with notes and asked again was a person’s. Some saints came at once; some took five tries and a change of heart. This is the one we would hang ourselves.