Joan of Arc, on finding the sword she had dreamt of, in the church of St. Catherine de Fierbois, devotes herself and it to the service of God and her country

Joan of Arc Finding the Sword at Saint Catherine de Fierbois, a monumental 300 × 200 cm canvas painted in 1842 and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, is one of Etty's most ambitious late history paintings, depicting the moment in 1429 when the young visionary peasant recovered a miraculous sword hidden behind the altar of a chapel near Tours — fulfilling a dream she had received as a divine sign. Etty's treatment of Joan as a devotional figure — the painting emphasizes her kneeling prayer and spiritual dedication over her martial role — reflected the Victorian British interest in the medieval French heroine that coincided with France's own patriotic rediscovery of Joan during the July Monarchy period. Jules Michelet's celebrated biography of Joan (1841) appeared just before this painting, and the subject was simultaneously fashionable in French and British Romantic culture. Etty's choice to exhibit this work at the Royal Academy and subsequently place it in the Orléans museum — the city most associated with Joan's victories — was both artistically ambitious and diplomatically sensitive during the period of Anglo-French cultural rapprochement under Louis-Philippe.

Etty's figure work shows his strengths: warm, luminous flesh rendered with Rubensian richness, the gesture of dedication conveyed through pose rather than expression. Drapery is handled with theatrical breadth. The church interior provides architectural structure while the light falls on Joan in a way that suggests divine illumination.