I found this painting of Joan of Arc beautiful, before noticing her spiritual guests. See the description by Muther below.
“The scene of the picture is a garden of Damvillers, painted exactly from nature, with its gray soil, its apple and pear trees clothed with small leaves, its vegetable beds, and its flowers growing wild. Joan herself is a pious, careworn, dreamy country girl. Every Sunday she has been to church, lost herself in long, mystic reveries before the old sacred pictures, heard the misery of Erance spoken of; and the painted statues of the parish church and its tutelary saints pursue her thoughts. And just to-day, as she sat winding yarn in the shadow of the apple trees, murmuring a prayer, she heard of a sudden the heavenly voices speaking. The spirits of St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine, before whose statues she has prayed so often, have freed themselves from wooden images and float as light phantoms, as pallid shapes of mist, which will as suddenly vanish into air before the eyes of the dreaming girl. Joan rises trembling, throwing her stool over, and steps forward. She stands in motionless ecstasy stretching out her left arm, and gazing into vacancy, with her pupils morbidly dilated.”
Richard Muther, HIstory of Modern Painting
