Statues, sculptures - Montmartre Cemetery

We haven’t yet left the Montmartre Cemetery. I have too many photos and I just have to show them. :-)

Below, there are some examples of the many statues, sculptures, you can find, especially on the older 19th century tombs, but also on some of the more recent ones. Some of these statues have already appeared in previous posts, but most of them are new.

But first... I would like to draw the special attention to a few, which I have not shown before.

The top photo is of one of the most beautiful ladies in the cemetery. It was made by the mother of a young man; he died at the age of 20 in 1910 and was called Robert Didsbury. Surprisingly enough I have found no information about the mother, who obviously was a very gifted sculptor. It seems that it is a self-portrait and goes under the name of "Douleur". The brother of Robert who died in 1971 is also buried here as well as a Jacqueline Didsbury, who was born the same year as Robert died; she died in 1995. Is the mother also buried here?

A second tomb is the rest place of David Iffla (1825-1907), better known under the name of “Osiris”. The statue (by Antonin Mercié) is a copy of the Michelangelo statue of Moses which can be found on the tomb of the Pope Julius II in the Saint Peter Church in Rome.

David Iffla was known under the name of Osiris, an Egyptian god, the god of “afterlife”. I have found two explanations why he took this name, one that this was the name of a ship he saw in Bordeaux during his childhood; the other one should be linked to his adoration of his wife, who died young (the "afterlife"). “Osiris” was a very wealthy – and generous - man, who gave his money to charity, to the building of several synagogues, to artists, to the creation of Marie Curie’s Radium Institute … and who bought and renovated the Château de Malmaison, the home of Josephine de Beauharnais (and Napoleon) and offered it to the French state. Today it’s a museum well worth a visit (in the Paris suburb Rueil-Malmaison).

On the grave of another wealthy man, who worked for the fashion house Nina Ricci, Klaus Peter Preis (1936-2003), an important and generous art collector who donated a lot to museums, is a statue by Paul Landowski. Paul Landowski (1875-1961) has made a great number of sculptures - some 50 to be found only in Paris – and has his own museum (at Boulogne-Billancourt, another Paris suburb) - including the “Sainte Genevieve” on the Pont de la Tournelle (see previous post), “Les fils de Caïn” in the Tuileries Gardens (see previous posts), a monument to the glory of the French army, Place de Trocadéro (see previous posts: 1, 2)… He is of course particularly famous for the “Christ de Corcovado” (Christ the Redeemer) at Rio de Janeiro.

And now a collage of other statues and sculptures:

Here is where you can find the specific statues I referred to above: