"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."
"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."
Restoration work on the nearly 37-foot Madonna and Child statue atop Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseille revealed seven bullet holes in the copper and iron figures. Four holes were found in the child’s hand, arm and stomach and three in the mother's body. The statue, known as the Bonne Mère, weighs over 20,000 pounds and underwent a five-year restoration including re-gilding for the first time since 1989. The statue was hidden behind scaffolding from February through late October, during which a blinking light was installed inside the scaffolding to replicate a beating heart. The shootings are believed to have occurred during three days of German artillery fire after Marseille's 1944 liberation, and a restored crown was returned by helicopter in October.
Read at ARTnews.com
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