Marseille has a second Good Mother, the Virgin and Child who has watched over the city since 1870

She came down from the sky, in a helicopter. Provence reports that Marseille has been hosting, since Monday, a replica of its Virgin and Child at the top of Fort Saint-Jean, at the entrance to the Old Port. A copy of the one that covers Notre-Dame de la Garde. 3 meters high without counting the base, compared to 9.7 for the original, it weighs several hundred kilos. Against several tons for the original.

The replica was imagined as part of an exhibition at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM) dedicated to the Good Mothers. Not just Virgos. The objective is to explore “Mediterranean motherhood as an object of social construction, political issue and artistic subject”details the establishment created in 2013, to which Fort Saint-Jean is attached. Works by Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint Phalle and Prune Nourry, more recently, appear in this route visible until the end of August. The statue, according to The Parisianwill subsequently travel to museums abroad.

Restoration of the original

“There are many Good Mothers in Marseille”informs Caroline Chenu, one of the curators of the exhibition, from 20 minutes . Nearly 300 statues of virgins, large and small, sit in niches dug at the corner of the city walls. The MuCEM specifies that the diocese has given authorization for the reproduction of the statue inaugurated in 1870, the work of the Parisian artist Eugène-Louis Lequesne and the Christofle workshops.

The house specializing in goldsmithing and tableware also signs the copy. It was modeled digitally before centuries-old techniques of foundry and gold leaf gilding took over. “The genius of gold is its plasticity, it stretches and conforms to shapes without creasing”confided in November 2025 the gilders who participated in the restoration of the original Virgin.

“She looks at us all”: in Marseille, at the top of Notre-Dame de la Garde, the statue of the Virgin and Child completes its restoration

This was the subject of passionate care last year in order to erase the effects of the mistral and the sea spray. The gold protects the sculpture from the attacks of wind, salt and pollution, but the copper had oxidized where the gold leaves had disappeared, beading the faces of the Virgin and Child with green spots. It now has nothing to envy of the brand new double which sits two hundred meters below.