Saint Joan of Arc, 2 Timothy 4:7 Wall Art

Kneeling in armor

Joan kneels on one knee on a patch of grass, eyes closed, her brown hair loosely tied at the nape. She wears steel plate over a cream sleeve, with a long rust-red cloak and a blue and cream skirt falling around her. Her hands are clasped on the pommel of her sword, whose blade is planted point down in the earth, so that hilt and crossguard form a cross in front of her face.

Behind her, a tall lance carries a cream banner with a red cross, its lower edge torn and frayed as if it has come through battle. The sky is left as bare paper. The verse runs across the top in two lines: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course,” and 2 Timothy 4:7 beneath.

Who was Joan of Arc, and why this verse?

Joan was a peasant girl from Domrémy, in eastern France, who said that from about the age of thirteen she heard the voices of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. In 1429, at seventeen, she persuaded the future Charles VII to let her join the army, helped lift the English siege of Orléans and stood beside him at his coronation in Reims. Captured the following year, she was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431, aged about nineteen. A later papal retrial declared her innocent, and she was canonized in 1920.

At her trial she said she loved her banner far more than her sword, and that she carried it in battle so as not to kill anyone. The painting's plain cross is a simplification: her real standard, by her own account, bore the names of Jesus and Mary.

The verse is Paul's, written from prison to his young companion Timothy, as he sensed his death was near. The full line adds a third claim: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” It is the voice of someone looking back, not boasting of victories but of faithfulness to the end, which is how the Church remembers Joan too.

For a confirmation saint

Many girls choose Saint Joan as their confirmation name, and this print makes a meaningful gift for that day, from a sponsor or a godparent. It also speaks to anyone finishing something hard: a graduation, a recovery, a long service. Her feast day, May 30, is another good occasion. Hang it in a teenager's bedroom or a study.