A statue of Saint Joan of Arc erected in the heart of Nice is surrounded by controversy. Ostensibly, a flawed administrative procedure in the commissioning of the statue forced its dismantling. But beneath the surface, the real issue is political: the workshop that created the statue is seen as too ‘right-wing.’ A town in Hungary has since offered to host the statue expelled from the French city.
In October 2024, a monumental statue of Saint Joan of Arc was unveiled in the centre of Nice, commissioned by Mayor Christian Estrosi and made by Atelier Missor, a workshop of daring young sculptors, based in Nice at the time. The Atelier Missor says its mission is to bring beauty back to today’s world through its sculptures and has devoted itself to the saint since its creation. Sculptors created a statue weighing 9 tonnes and standing 4.5 metres high, gilded with fine gold and invoiced at €170,000.
The mayor’s choice was not to everyone’s liking. As soon as the statue was installed, suspicions of favouritism in the awarding of the contract to Atelier Missor surfaced. At the time, Estrosi dismissed the criticism: “It’s superb and that’s all that should matter. This bronze statue by the Atelier Missor will go down in history and in the books as an example. And for Nice, it’s a source of pride to finally have a statue of Joan of Arc,” he wrote on X at the time of the inauguration.
The prefect—the central government’s representative in the region—denounced the lack of advertising and prior competitive tendering before the contract was awarded to Atelier Missor. This is a compulsory procedure for this type of project, but one that can be waived if the artist approached is the only one capable of carrying out the work. The prefect lodged an appeal with the administrative court, which initially ruled in favour of the mayor and the workshop, but the Left relentlessly claimed that Atelier Missor was not the “only one capable,” but had been chosen for political and ideological reasons.
A few months later, the verdict came down: the rules for awarding the contract had not been respected. The court ordered the city of Nice to dismantle the statue and reimburse the €170,000 that the Atelier Missor had received for the commission.
For the workshop, the court’s decision came as a crushing blow: “Our studio will go bankrupt,” announced the artists on their X account on Friday, January 24th. The city has announced that it is appealing, but the ruling must be enforced, regardless of any appeal. The statue must therefore be taken down.
The conflict has definitely taken a political turn. For Christian Estrosi, the decision, at the initiative of the prefect and the courts, to remove a statue of Joan of Arc, a national hero, is anything but trivial, as he explained in a press release:
At a time when France is struggling to find its bearings in a period of unprecedented instability, here we have its representative attacking the figure of Joan of Arc, whom we wished to embody through the installation of a bronze statue opposite the church dedicated to the heroine.
He concludes bitterly: “The ‘debunkers’ of our great national destiny can move on.”
The founder of the workshop shares these feelings: “When I started sculpting, I felt that there was a power in the statues that we were unaware of. But when the statue of Joan of Arc was attacked, I realised that civilisation also has its enemies,” he explained to Frontières magazine.
A fund was set up online to help the Atelier, with the support of a former deputy mayor of Nice and Prince Joachim Murat, a descendant of Napoleon’s marshal, and a long-standing admirer and supporter of the Atelier.
But an unexpected way out has since opened. On the initiative of the Christian Democrat party (KDNP), the coalition partner of the ruling Fidesz, a Hungarian town has offered to host the statue that was expelled from Nice: the town of Mátészalka. In a press release, local Hungarian authorities said they wanted to preserve and enhance symbols of Western history, which they consider to be universal values. “The struggle and martyrdom of Joan of Arc continue,” declared Mayor Péter Hanusi. “The KDNP supports any initiative aimed at saving our Western culture based on Christianity,” he wrote.
