ABSTRACT
The resurgence of republican symbolism in the fall and winter of 1830 manifested the shift in France's cultural and political climate at the start of the July Monarchy. Voltaire's ribald rendition of Joan of Arc's life, written both as a satiric response to Chapelain's ponderous poem and as a trenchant political critique of the French monarchy and the Catholic church, incited Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans. In Jules Michelet's work, Joan of Arc can be seen as embodying the transformative potential of selfless virtue in the formation of a more just, fraternal, and nationally collective society founded on God's "love and grace" and rooted in the le peuple— the common folk — of France. In preparation for a large oil painting of the same subject, Ingres returned to the image of Joan of Arc at Reims at some point during the six years following the 1846 publication of his designs for the Maid in The French Plutarch.
