St. Thomas Church
Marble mausoleum by sculptor Pigalle honoring a marshal France refused to bury for decades.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to St. Thomas Church in Strasbourg opens with a question: why did France take twenty-seven years to bury its greatest general? Maurice de Saxe won the decisive battle of Fontenoy for Louis XV in 1745, but as a Protestant he was barred from Notre-Dame or Saint-Denis, and his body reached Strasbourg in 1751 to await a solution. That solution was sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, given a commission with no deadline, who spent two decades sketching before carving even began. Look up at the marble tableau of Death, France, and the conquered emblems of three nations, and consider what a country too proud to bury its hero quietly chose to build instead.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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