A giant Madonna and Child statue said to protect the people of Marseille from a perch atop a cathedral was shot by Nazis during World War II, as recently discovered during a restoration process that revealed seven bullet holes in the duo’s copper and iron bodies.
The mother and child stand at the top of Notre-Dame de la Garde, at the city’s highest peak, and is known as the Bonne Mère (Good Mother) to those who peer up at it rising into the sky. The icon is nearly 37 feet tall and weighs more than 20,000 pounds. The bullet holes were discovered near the end of a five-year restoration that included re-gilding the surface of the statue for the first time since 1989.
As part of the restoration process, the statue was hidden behind scaffolding from February through late October. As reported by The Art Newspaper, “Emphasising how keenly her absence was felt, the chief architect and art historian Xavier David, who has worked on the church since the late 1990s, says they installed a blinking light inside the scaffolding—to replicate the Madonna’s beating heart.”
Four bullet holes from decades ago were found in baby Jesus’s hand, arm, and stomach, and three were discovered in the body of his mother. The shootings are thought to have occurred after Marseille was liberated from Nazi occupation by troops from Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, and France troops in 1944. As David told TAN, “At that point, a great rumour, a great hurrah, ran through the city; everyone thought it was over. But it wasn’t. For three days and three nights, German artillery units stationed at the base of the hill, in the Saint Nicolas fort, fired on the church. They pierced the bell tower, they broke stained-glass windows, they destroyed the ceiling mosaic and they shot at the statue.”
The beloved icon was fitted with a newly restored crown by a chopper in October, as depicted in a scintillating Instagram reel posted by Airbus Helicopters. With all back in place, the reborn statue will be inaugurated on December 7.
