c picture of Jeanne. From her we know that at
Arras she saw in the hands of a Scotsman a picture in which she was
represented on her knees presenting a letter to her King. From her we
know also that she never caused to be made either image or painting of
herself, and that she was not aware of the existence of any such image
or painting. The portrait painted by the Scotsman, which was doubtless
very small, is unfortunately lost and no copy of it is known.[2768]
The slight pen-and-ink figure, drawn on a register of May 10, 1429, by
a clerk of the Parlement of Paris, who had never seen the Maid, must
be regarded as the mere scribbling of a scribe who was incapable of
even designing a good initial letter.[2769] I shall not attempt to
reconstruct the iconography of the Maid.[2770] The bronze equestrian
statue in the Cluny Museum produces a grotesque effect that one is
tempted to believe deliberate, if one may ascribe such an intention to
an old sculptor. It dates from the reign of Charles VIII. It is a
Saint George or a Saint Maurice, which, at a time doubtless quite
recent, was taken to represent the Maid. Between the legs of the
miserable jade, on which the figure is mounted, was engraved the
inscription: _La pucelle dorlians_, a description which would not
have been employed in the fifteenth century.[2771] About 1875, the
Cluny Museum exhibited another statuette, slightly larger, in painted
wood, which was also believed to be fifteenth century, and to
represent Jeanne d'Arc. It was relegated to the store-room, when it
turned out to be a bad seventeenth-century Saint Maurice from a church
at Montargis.[2772] Any saint in armour is frequently described as a
Jeanne d'Arc. This is what happened to a small fifteenth-century head
wearing a helmet, found buried in the ground at Orleans, broken off
from a statue and still bearing traces of painting: a work in good
style and with a charming expression.[2773] I have not patience to
relate how many initial letters of antiphonaries and sixteenth-,
seventeenth- and even eighteenth-century miniatures have been touched
up or repainted and passed off as true and ancient representations of
Jeanne. Many of them I have had the opportunity of seeing.[2774] On
the other hand, if they were not so well known, it would give me
pleasure to recall certain manuscripts of the fifteenth century,
which, like _Le Champion des Dames_ and _Les Vigiles de Charles VII_,
contain miniatures in which the Maid