Monument aux morts

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

Voted on 12 October 1924, the monument was inaugurated with great ceremony on 2 October 1927. A cement wall marked with posts defines its footprint on the church square. The monument proper is set back at the edge of the church forecourt. This structure conceals a significant change in level perceptible only at the rear of the structure and in fact originates a few metres lower down. This rear facade is constructed of reinforced cement concrete imitating ashlar stone. However, nowadays the passer-by is struck only by the upper part of the monument, raised on three steps. This is architecture of ashlar stone of great simplicity: a central body is flanked by two masses whose crownings bear the dates of the conflict in low relief. The central mass presents on two pilasters the names of the victims engraved in red. Joseph Grandet is the author of the various bronze works which ornament the structure: facing front, with the sword garlanded like a cross of fire at the centre of the facade, the palm of the martyrs - which one finds on most war memorials - in the lower part, the two applied reliefs of Marianne and a French soldier on the sides of the structure, and finally the free-standing figure at the summit. If this monument radiates great power, it is indeed through the figure of the mourning woman who dominates it, an effigy offered by the citizens of Pierrefort who emigrated to Paris. The figure shows us a peasant woman kneeling in prayer with hands joined in a gesture of distress. The double movement of her legs conveys two realities of grief: one knee on the earth, an earth strewn with withered laurels, where rest the men she has lost, the other supporting her elbow and her head imprinting a projection into a future which seems devoid of meaning. Several interpretations can nevertheless be proposed. She is indeed perhaps kneeling before the imaginary tomb of the fallen soldier. She weeps without doubt also for all the dead whose names are inscribed beneath her. This imposing figure dominates the contemplator without truly towering over him but marking him lastingly with her distress. The empathy that is forged is also due to the naturalism of the representation (perceptible both in the applied profiles and on the hollow-cheeked face of the widow), and to the sobriety of the representation which gives all its power of speech to the monument. A pupil of Denys Puech, then director of the French Academy in Rome, Joseph-Maurice Grandet (1877-1941) is an Aveyron sculptor, who has affixed his signature twice on the lateral bas-reliefs, accompanied by the date of execution. These two sculptors had already collaborated on another war memorial of the 1914-18 war at Mur-de-Barrez, in the Aveyron.