Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (3(39).2014)

Piotr Borusowski Lost and Found. The Drawing of Joan of Arc by Peter Paul Rubens...

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Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637). Thanks to his broad contacts, the project could count on the
participation of representatives of the intellectual elite of early seventeenth-century Europe,
including Nicolas Rigault, Nicolas Bergier, François Maynard, Etienne Pasquier, François
de Malherbe, Marie le Jars de Gournay, Hugo Grotius and Rubens’s close friend, Jan Gaspar
Gevaerts (Gevartius). The publication began with prefaces by Louis XIII and Marie de’ Medici.
Interestingly enough, Peiresc also wrote to Rubens about the inscriptions - he asked him in
1622 to exert some pressure on Gevartius, who had begun work on his poem on Joan back in
1617, but had failed to deliver it.72 In the end, the work was published in 1628 and apart from
inscription proposals, it also contained poems glorifying the Maid of Orléans.73 Considering
the subject of the painting, it is not surprising that McGrath (and then Eohse Belkin and
Weller after her) suggested that the painting was created for a French client, such as du Lys
or the authorities of Orléans, if not for Peiresc himself. Even though the long-standing cor-
respondence between Rubens and the French scholar and antiquarian began in late 1619, the
painting could have been created in connection with the painter’s trip to Paris in 1622, when
both of them met for the first time.74
The peculiar nature of the drawing in terms of its precision could therefore be justified
in two ways. First of all, as a design for a painting, a sketch on paper was easier to send over a
long distance for the commissioner’s approval than an oil modello, as was indicated by Müller
Hofstede.75 The second circumstance is related to who actually painted the Raleigh canvas. It is
practically impossible to establish to what extent Rubens contributed to it - or whether he did
at all. Of course the composition and physiognomic type are Rubens’s, but the master himself
need not have been responsible for the first stage of the painting. There is not much that can
be said in that respect based on the X-ray photograph which shows the elements that were
painted over, but does not allow any attempt at an identification of the “hands.” As is proved
by the analysis of the Copenhagen drawing, the part of the painting depicting the figure of
Joan was in a similar condition during the artist’s lifetime to what we see today. Therefore,
one could speculate that its current appearance is not so much the result of inept finish, but of
being cursorily painted. The rest of the composition was executed in such a sketchy manner
that the painter who undertook to finish the work removed a considerable part of it, painted
over several elements (columns, fragment of the curtain) and retouched others (e.g., the rug). It
is difficult to explain the alteration of the shape of Joan’s head and facial expression. Although
Dennis Weller supported the assumption of two stages of creating the work, he attributed both
of them - rightly so, in my opinion - to Rubens’s workshop, as there are no grounds for thinking
that the master could have begun it.76 However, if the painting was indeed the product of the
workshop, we must assume that the artist (or artists) who worked on it had to have a modello
to use as a basis for its execution that could not have been simply a first, general concept of the

72 Unfortunately, the published letters do not include Rubens’s reply. Gevartius delivered his poem
c. 1622-23. See McGrath, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 320 and n. 28.
73 Charles du Lys, Recueil de plusieurs inscriptions proposées pour remplir les tables d’attente estans sous les
statues du Roy Charles VII et de la Pucelie d’Orléans, qui sont élevées, également armées, et à genoux, aux deux costez d’une
Croix, et de l’image de la Vierge Marie estant au pied d’icelle, sur le pont de la ville d’Orléans, dès l’an 1458. Et de diverses
poésies faites à la louange de la mesme Pucelle, de ses frères et de leur postérité... (Paris, 1628).
74 McGrath, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 320-21.
75 Müller Hofstede, op. cit., p. 305.
76 Weller, op. cit., passim.