"Monvel and the Maid of Orleans: Sources of Inspiration in the Joan of Arc Paintings"

This paper explores three potential sources of inspiration for Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel’s depictions of Joan of Arc. Annaliese’s Scholarship bridges a gap between the life of the artist and his work. The three avenues of influence she discovered through Scavenging through de Monvel’s life were: the Battle of San Romano paintings by Paolo Uccello, the medieval brocades, and the and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. 

Annaliese graduated in May of 2023 with a degree in Art History and a minor in Philosophy. She currently works in Advancement for the Architecture and Engineering Program while taking courses to get her Master's in Library Science. This paper was originally written as her Senior Thesis for her Undergraduate degree. 

Annaliese's goal for this paper was simply to justify a connection between influence and the artist that others had missed, no matter how nuanced and subtle the connection may be. It became a personal quest to produce original and academic research where she had to be able to defend her own entirely new idea. 

This research began with a love for her "happy place"-- the side room in the National Gallery, which is right off the sculptures of Degas and Rodin, where all six of de Monvel's Joan of Arc Paintings are. She first saw them in high-school. Annaliese began this research with a state of wonder and curiosity at the sheer transformative beauty of these paintings. 

Annaliese says in her own words why her research is doing something unique: "There was never a person who put all of these together." She said often articles would speak about a connection or a few, but never one that "scavenged catalogs" looking for everything he would have seen before painting these works. 

This research proves a belief that Annaliese holds true: "Art is never in isolation," "You cannot have a single isolated experience with art. Especially, as you continue to develop and go further along in a timeline, you will always be able to pull threads." She is so excited to share with the CUA community a "small bit" of what she gets to discover when she looks at art and asks, "Isn't it neat? Isn't it fun? Isn't it beautiful?". Writing original art history is sharing the hidden world of a work of art. 

Read Annaliese’s piece, “Monvel and the Maid of Orleans: Sources of Inspiration in the Joan of Arc Paintings”, in the upcoming issue of Inventio's Volume 9!