Artist C.H. Michel's painting of Joan of Arc in Blois

On the afternoon of June 19, 2009, my friend Charles-Henry and I drove up to Blois to see the château there. Charles-Henry was visiting from Paris, where he was spending the summer. He had recently learned from a cousin that a painting by his grandfather depicting Joan of Arc at Blois in the year 1429 was on display at the château there. Blois an old royal city that is on the Loire River less than an hour's drive north of Saint-Aignan.

That was the first time Charles-Henry had laid eyes on this painting of his grandfather's in 53 years. Charles-Henry was 84 years old in 2009. His grandfather had finished the painting in 1901 at the age, I think, of 87. It must have been Charles-Henry's father, born in 1860 in Paris, who donated it to the Château de Blois.

The plaque above explains that Joan of Arc was in Blois in the year 1429 during the 100 Years War when she raised an army and proceeded to march her soldiers to the city of Orléans to liberate it from the English forces who had occupied it. The English would burn Joan at the stake up in Rouen in Normandy just two years later. It also says that it is one of the few existing depictions of Joan's time in Blois.

By the way, Blois is a city that played a central role in French history for many centuries. Back in the Middle Ages, the powerful counts of Blois were the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of  William the Conqueror, who had come to be called "the Conqueror" after his army defeated the English army in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. William became the king of England and at least one of his Blois descendants, named Étienne (Stephen), was also the king of England from 1135 until his death in 1154.