Union of the Snake

I've done a whole series about snake imagery as it relates to the Crucifixion and the medical profession, as well as the sculpture of Bourdelle, the shenanigans of Moses, and the Black Virgins. Not sure I have more to say on the theme, but in the cause of my ongoing psychogeographical-like efforts to invest the drab and humdrum commute I am obliged to undertake in my ongoing struggle as a wage slave with some meaning, I post this. The Toulouse metro uses a symbol for each station, and the Phaculté de Pharmacie uses a serpent. 

Of course, this is self-evident. What is not is that it's one of the stations I now use frequently in my current pursuit of gainful employment. Signs and symbols keep reoccurring in my personal geography.  My psychogeography. Apophenia, red car phenomenon. Whatever.  Both objectively "true" and subjectively meaningful. As if subjective and objective mean anything anymore, if they ever did.

And hey, it sets my thoughts in motion and makes the drab and deary navigation through the stultifying urban shitscape somehow a little better than completely meaningless..... 

Bourdelle's "La France": Montauban copy

When I first saw Bourdelle's La France in Paris in 2011 (on LoS), it encompassed a lot of what I was writing about at the time, featuring symbols with which I'd become very familiar:  A strong woman as an embodiment of France, a serpent, pillars, and a triangle.

There are four bronze castings of the sculpture made from the original maquette, and the Paris version is the fourth (dedicated June 14, 1948).  Another is in Montauban, the capital of the Tarn-et-Garonne, just a short hop up the road from chez moi.  This second casting was dedicated on November 13, 1932.  The base feautures plaques commemorating every conflict from WWI to 21st-century military actions in places such as Chad and ex-Yugoslavia, a couple of names each on small "ex-voto" compared to the hundreds of names around the base naming the staggering number of victims of the Great War.  If you examine my not-so-great photographs, you'll see that for some reason in version two the spear carried by the Athena-like woman is longer than version four, the spearhead seems slightly different, and it certainly isn't hung with the two wreaths one sees on the Paris casting.

The third version is also quite a bit different, as it (quoting myself): 

had originally been placed at the entrance of the "foire d'Alger." After the foire, it was put on the terrace of the Musée de Beaux-Arts, where she scrutinized the Mediterranean.  This one has the most storied history.

As a symbol of de Gaulle, the statue was blown up on the evening of November 26, 1961 by the OAS (Organisation armée secrète), a far-right group who despised de Gaulle for what they perceived as his treason towards Algeria, then a French Department, after his actions led to Algerian independence in 1962.  The socle was pulverized and the statue damaged. 

After this symbolic attack, the pieces were collected and stored until the statue could be repaired.  The French ambassador obtained permission to recover the statue but the French administration refused to pay for the transport cost, instead foisting the responsibility upon Paris' Bourdelle museum.  It was eventually taken to be repaired but the part of the support which depicted the snakes, as well as that part of the lance which held the olive branches, were too damaged to be repaired.  This lance was later sawed down in order for it to fit inside the museum of the Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan military academy.

So.  Not much new, I just happened to stumble upon La France (#2) in Montauban recently, after having forgotten my idea to try and hunt it down after reading about it while researching the one in Paris.  The different castings each have their own history, and I was surprised to learn they had originally been cast for different kinds of monuments. For example, the original maquette was made to commemorate the US' entry into the First World War.  The project floundered but a half-sized casting was exposed at the Salon in 1923.  In 1925, the full-sized, 9m version was cast for use in an expo, after which it was acquired by Briançon, where it stands alone as the city's war memorial.  The second was made directly for Montauban's monument aux morts.  The commission for the Montauban monument, described as a "temple," was given to Bourdelle in 1921, but the monument was not completed until 1930, a year after Bourdelle's death.  The third sat outside a museum in Algiers, was dynamited by the OAS, and then reassembled for another museum, inside this time, at the École St-Cyr.  Number four honors the Free French and "the call" of June 18 by de Gaulle, and was privately funded.  The OAS must have been thrilled.

In addition to the four 9m casts, there are also some 4.6m casts held by various museums.

Apparently, Bourdelle considered La France to be his greatest work, which is saying something, considering that Bourdelle's body of work is impressive in both quantity and quality.  If you look at his lifespan, 1861-1929, the radical modernity of his work is especially striking.  It's really kind of surprising he's not as well-known as say, Rodin, who was an admirer.  I'm lucky that quite a few of his sculptures dot Montauban.  La France is only one of many Bourdelle's works to be found in and around the historic city center near what is now a museum for another native-son, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Axis-sixA

Google Earth view of the "Pombal Axis"

On a recent trip to Lisbon I had the opportunity to stroll along the Avenida de Liberdad, from the Praça dos Restauradores at its Southeast extremity to the Parque Eduardo VII at the Northwest.  This creates a monumental axis which made me think of the East-West "axe historique" of Paris.  As you may recall, in a recent post LoS touched briefly on this "historical axis" between the Arche de la Défense and the Louvre.

It's not surprising that I was primed to think of this axis while strolling the Avenida:  "After much discussion and polemics, the avenue was built between 1879 and 1886, modeled after the boulevards of Paris."

As with the Paris axis, it is lined with monuments, including an obelisk at the Southeast end.  The Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde sits directly in the line of the axe historique.  So too the National Mall in Washington DC (also oriented East-West).  Pierre l'Enfant's original plan called for a tree-lined "grand avenue" which would have been anchored at one end by the US Capitol Building and of course, the Washington Monument--an enormous obelisk--at the other.

Circumcision

So, Googling about I came across some good articles.  In "The Axis in Urban Design" Gary Gaston writes (emphasis added): 

As a tool of city building, the axis is a primary element in the European Baroque tradition, a tradition which urban historian Spiro Kostof describes in The City Shaped as the “Grand Manner.”  The most enduring themes of this tradition were first articulated in the master plan of Pope Sixtus V for 16th century Rome: the notion of the vista, the use of the obelisk as a striking spatial marker, and the overarching principle of geometric order for its own sake. France appropriated the Baroque aesthetic, most notably in the replanning of Paris by Baron Eugene Georges Haussmann between 1853 and 1868.

The axe historique, National Mall and Avenida de Liberdad fit this tradition to a "T".  They are furthermore, quite clearly what Kostof calls "constellations of monumentality": 

The street is no longer thought of merely as “the space left over between buildings, but as a spatial element with its own integrity.” The buildings defining the street channel are viewed as continuous planes rather than independent entities. And straight streets are used to connect churches and other public buildings--creating “constellations of monumentality.”

He continues:

“The European Baroque,” Kostof says, “is a phenomenon of capital cities.”  As such the city not only houses the mechanisms of government but itself became a kind of living monument and includes "The siting of monuments on major axes to memorialize leaders and events that helped to form the nation."  In City of Light I referred to Washington as a hieratic city.   I owe a debt here to Camille Paglia, who I'd already quoted as saying: 

"Our cold white Federal architecture is Roman. Banks and government buildings are vast temples of state, tombs and fortresses....Rome rediscovered the hieratic Egyptian funeralism latent in Greek Apollonian style...."

In Washington, the entire city serves only one purpose, to house and glorify the state and its organisms.  Gaston goes as far to say that the "The evolution of [the L'Enfant] plan, extending its strongly formalistic nature, reaffirms the capital as the physical manifestation of the nation."

In Building a Sense of a Nation, Tomaz Pipan writes: 

We can not say that architecture and urbanism on themselves contribute to the constitution of national identity but rather that they can be utilized by ruling regime to graft the notions of nation. They became symbolic carriers of national ideas. Through constant upholding and renewal, these symbols get written into collective sub-consciousness, becoming collective memory thus enabling cultural and historical continuity of a nation.

I've said as much in at least two posts (1, 2) quite explicitly; where not explicit in others, it is certainly implied.

But for all the ceremonial or monumental functions of a capital city axis, there are certainly practical concerns; take the Haussmann plan: 

The project encompassed all aspects of urban planning, both in the centre of Paris and in the surrounding districts: streets and boulevards, regulations imposed on facades of buildings, public parks, sewers and water works, city facilities, and public monuments. Beyond aesthetic and sanitary considerations, the wide thoroughfares were constructed to facilitate troop movement and prevent easy blocking of streets with barricades, and their straightness allowed artillery to fire on rioting crowds and their barricades.

Clever, innit?  If yer gonna design a city, why not make it easy to lob bombs on its residents?

Gaston cites Pope Sixtus V as the inspiration behind the tradition which led to such monumental axis-oriented urban design, but I would suggest the seeds of this were planted by the ancient Romans during their period of expansion and city-founding....which gave them plenty of opportunity to create planned cities which anticipate Haussmann's practical concerns: 

The ancient Romans used a consolidated scheme for city planning, developed for military defense and civil convenience. The basic plan consisted of a central forum with city services, surrounded by a compact, rectilinear grid of streets, and wrapped in a wall for defense. To reduce travel times, two diagonal streets crossed the square grid, passing through the central square. A river usually flowed through the city, providing water, transport, and sewage disposal....They would lay out the streets at right angles, in the form of a square grid. All roads were equal in width and length, except for two, which were slightly wider than the others. One of these ran east–west, the other, north–south, and intersected in the middle to form the center of the grid. All roads were made of carefully fitted flag stones and filled in with smaller, hard-packed rocks and pebbles. Bridges were constructed where needed. Each square marked by four roads was called an insula, the Roman equivalent of a modern city block.

Rome is famously said to have been built on (a symbol-heavy) seven hills.  Wikipedia lists 51 other cities which also make this claim.  Lisbon is one of these.  Skipping centuries of history, let's cut to 1755 when Lisbon was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami.  As much as 25% of the population may have been killed and 85% percent of its buildings destroyed.  But the people reacted admirably and were fortunate to have the good leadership of  Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Count of Oeiras, 1st Marquess of Pomba.  There were no epidemics and within a year the city was being rebuilt.  New buildings were designed and tested to withstand earthquakes and the Marquess had the wits to send out a survey to the affected areas with intelligent questions which contributed to the science of seismology.

The Marquess has been described as Portugal's quintessential Enlightenment figure.  Part of his rebuilding plan included the hard hit Baixa Pombalina: "The Marquis of Pombal imposed strict conditions on rebuilding the city, and the current grid pattern strongly differs from the organic streetplan that characterised the district before the Earthquake."  The Pombalina district encompasses, incidentally, the axis formed by the Avenida Libertad.

Let me again quote Pipan: 

We can not say that architecture and urbanism on themselves contribute to the constitution of national identity but rather that they can be utilized by ruling regime to graft the notions of nation. They became symbolic carriers of national ideas.

What ideas, then, does the "Pombaline Axis" represent?

The beginning of the axis is the Parque Eduardo VII, 26 hectares honoring Edwards VII's state visit to Portugal in 1902.  The park framed with two pairs of columns surmounted by circular forms:

Bacon and Joaz

These circular forms, upon closer inspection, are like victory wreaths, reposing on three isosceles triangles:

Tri Delta

Now, these triangles and pairs of pillars geek me out on Freemasonic imagery, but it's still a bit of a stretch to claim that they represent Jachin and Boaz in a stylized form; there are after all, four pillars all told.  That said, there's nothing to prevent us from hypothesizing that the architect, aware of the use of monumental columns in Mediterranean (Egyptian and Phoenician, specifically) architecture to emphasize the entrance to a sacred space, was referencing this tradition.  That the Temple of Solomon and Masonic Lodges also used/use this design element is probably a coincidence.

The motif of two pillars is reinforced by a curious sculpture fountain which (in yet another example) brings together stones and water.   The two pillars appear broken, and the rocks in the pool at the base of the fountain suggest rubble, perhaps evoking the same theme we shall see again in relation to the Pombal monument.

Got milk?

The central column is clearly a phallus, ejaculating.  The shaft is slightly curved and clearly has a glans.  It has been suggested that the obelisk is a stylized holdover from phallus worship; here the connection is made explicit as the fountain has the somewhat naturalistic form of a penis and at the same time evokes an obelisk.  Thus, with the obelisk at the opposite end of the axis, we find symmetry.  I would also suggest that in addition to an obelisk and free-standing pillars, a pyramid is suggested by the buttress-like support structure  In some ways I'm reminded of an infamous masonic monument erected by Solomon's Pillars Lodge No. 59 in Izmargard, Israel (photos here), placed in a roundabout, incidentally, on the road to Egypt.  A gateway, wot?

(BTW, this guy reports that one Jerry Golden claims that the monument "makes a clear statement to anyone crossing the border into Israel that the Illuminati (or Freemasons) are in control here."  (The Illuminati (Freemasons) are in control of Israel)  This is the kind of shit that makes my job difficult!  Izmargad is a suburb of Eilat, itself with a rough population of 47,000.  Israel has a population of nearly 8 million.  Hard to see how a small monument in a traffic circle in an obscure suburb indicates that the Freemasons or Illuminati control the country!.  But there you have it.  No wonder people roll their eyes when I wonder aloud if other public architecture bears a Masonic stamp.)

More interesting is the possibility that this phallic fountain is a sly nod to the obelisk at the opposite end of the axis and an intimation of the theme of regeneration.  This other obelisk sits in the Praça dos Restauradores, and is dedicated to the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy, a new beginning.  Likewise the monument to Pombal, which honors the man behind Lisbon's renewal after the 1755 earthquake.

In I ♥ Phoenicia I wrote about the Pillars of Hercules, two pillars symbolizing the rocky outcrops on the Straits of Gibraltar.  These pillars figure on the Spanish flag and in a sense (explained in the Phoenicia post) represent Spanish naval power.  In the post I also mention that a representation of the Pillars of Hercules appears on the title page of Sir Francis Bacon's Instauratio Magna or "Great Renewal", framing a ship sailing on a vast sea.  Bacon's works demonstrate his belief that the New World would regenerate the old; remember then, that Portugal was once a mighty naval power itself and its language, flung around the globe, is the last remnant of its vast colonial holdings:  Macau, Goa, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil....

That the pillars represent the Pillars of Hercules is supported by the fact that when viewed from the Northwest, the pillars frame the Atlantic Ocean, exactly like the cover engraving of Bacon's Great Renewal.  It may be worth mentioning that in front of Lisbon's City Hall there is a pillar with an astrolabe, the essential tool for maritime navigation and a device which figures on Portugal's national flag.

Tessellation of the plane

These hedges in the Parque Eduardo VII represent the basic principle of order underlying the Marquess' reconstruction plan.  Three layers of symmetry bringing to mind a Greek frieze.  As we've seen, the park honors the visit of England's Kind Edward VII (7 again, hrmph), thus honoring the historical links between England and Portugal.

Incidentally, Edward was: 

An active Freemason throughout his life when Edward VII was installed as Grand Master in 1874 he gave great impetus to the fraternity. The Prince was a great supporter of and publicist for Freemasonry. He regularly appeared in public, both at home and on his tours abroad, as Grand Master laying the foundation stones of public buildings, bridges, dockyards and churches with Masonic ceremonial....From 637 in 1814 the Grand Lodge had grown to 2,850 lodges when the Prince resigned the Grand Mastership on becoming King in 1901. Edward VII was one of the biggest contributors to the world's largest fraternity.

I encourage you to take a look at this page, detailing Pombal's extensive involvement in and protection of Freemasonry at a time when the Inquisition and the Jesuits had long harassed the Fraternity. 

Athena on the Pombal Monument

At the end of this geometrical vista one finds the Praça do Marquês de Pombal, usually translated as the Marquess of Pombal Square, which is odd, given that it's a traffic circle.  But no matter, squaring the circle is an old game, no?  The Marquess de Pombal is honored here, with a monumental column (1917-1934), upon which a bronze version of the man gazes towards his orderly neighborhood....and the sea.

At his feet are several allegorical figures and broken stones representing the ruins of Lisbon, like so many rough ashlars inviting improvement.  Facing in the opposite direction is a bronze sculpture of Athena, symbol of wisdom, which bears a passing resemblance to Bourdelle's La France, discussed here.  Like La France, Athena/Minerva holds her spear in her right hand.  The snake Erichthonius is wrapped around it's shaft and her owl sits at its base.

Athena/Minverva's owl, incidentally, also figures on the medallion of Portugal's Ordem dos Advogados and its website features another representation of the goddess which presumably, graces their HQ somewhere:

Athena and owl

From the Praça do Marquês de Pombal one proceeds down the tree-lined Avenida de Liberdad, a tony boulevard housing many of Portugal's high-end shops and which will eventually become famous for the time I ran from my comrade's car spewing vomit into the bushes as a police cruiser rolled by, after a night of too much too many as it were.  Other monuments, including a memorial to Portugal's WWI dead, are sheltered under the trees.

The axis terminates in the Praça dos Restauradores, an oval-shaped plaza "dedicated to the restoration of the independence of Portugal in 1640, after 60 years of Spanish domination. The obelisk in the middle of the square, inaugurated in 1886, carries the names and dates of the battles fought during the Portuguese Restoration War, in 1640."

So, I think a lot more well-informed and cleverer things than I'm capable of could be said to wrap all this up with something resembling a point, but it ain't me babe.  No answers here, just associations....

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics."

Here's a little ditty that brings together a few recurring LoS themes and fancies:  snakes, wimmins, a triangle, political vandalism, violence, sculpture....

It all begins with a quotation from a fellow by the name of Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle, known as "Chucky D" to his pals, not to be confused with Public Enemy front-man "Chuck D".   Actually, I just made that up.  One of his nicknames was, however, "the great asparagus."  Which just goes to prove that truth is stranger than fiction.

Flag of Free France; Wikicommons

Nous dirons à la France, simplement, comme Péguy : « Mère, voici vos fils qui se sont tant battus ». General de Gaulle, June 18, 1942

 

The line comes from Charles Peguy's poem Ève (1913).  Péguy was an ardent socialist and nationalist (two words which never sound well together) and later in his short life became a devout and mystical Catholic.  He wrote a play Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d'Arc that first appeared in 1910.  Joan of Arc, as we have already seen, remains a potent nationalist symbol in France.  He also had a special fondness for the Virgin Mary; indeed, he spent the night before his death decorating with flowers a small statue in the village where he was stationed.  Despite his devotion to Eve, Jeanne d'Arc and the Virgin, he was killed by a shot in the forehead on the eve of the battle of the Marne on September 5th, 1914.

Charles De Gaulle was evoking Péguy in 1942 to honor the volunteers who fought for Free France. In 1948 a monument was created for these volunteers, the centerpiece of which is a massive bronze sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle, student of Rodin and native of Montauban (prefecture of the department in which I live). Péguy's words "Mère, voici vos fils qui se sont tant battus", undoubtedly because of de Gaulle's speech, are etched on the front.

Appropriate line from a poem (Ève) which also includes the lines:  "Happy are those who die for the carnal earth/ but only if it be for a just war."  I've also come across another interesting piece of information about Peguy's poems here (no author listed):

"The arms of Jesus are the Cross of Lorraine / Both the blood in the artery and the blood in the vein, / Both the source of grace and the clear fountain" (from La Tapisserie de Sainte Geneviève, 1912). Noteworthy, during World War II the Cross of Lorraine was used as the symbol of the forces of Free France. Both the Resistance and the Vichy government cited Péguy's patriotic writings.

The same article also has the following quote:

"Faith is a great tree, an oak tree rooted deep in the heart of France", Péguy wrote in Le mystère des Saints Innocents (1912). 

This is very prophetic, if only a prophecy by coincidence.  The name "de Gaulle" is said to come from either "gaule" a long pole which was used in the Middle Ages to beat olives from the trees, or "galle" which in the language of Asterix means "oak", the sacred tree of the Druids.  One could argue that de Gaulle was France's mighty oak in the storm, rooted deeply and keeping the faith of a Free France alive.  Interestingly, the lance, or long pole (gaule) of the sculpture honoring the fighters of Free France is adorned with olives.  Another prophetic coincidence.  The statue dates from 1922.


Bourdelle's "La France," fourth copy, Paris.  LoS photo.

Peguy's lines translate into ""Mother, behold your sons who have fought so hard."  This line undoubtedly refers to the crucifixion of Jesus as described in John 19 (KJV): 

26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! 27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. 

Indeed the statue features a stylized representation of the crucified Jesus, on an inverted triangle.  I'm not sure why or if there are other examples of this symbolism.  Its inclusion here is certainly to link Peguy's lines to the Crucifixion, thus effectively linking the dead of the Free French Forces ("FFL" in French) to Jesus' martyrdom.  Thinking back to Ève, which begins "Happy are those who die for a carnal earth", one is reminded of the Beatitudes, which begin with either "Blessed are the...." which some translate as "Happy are the...." 

La France, detail.  LoS photo.

We have discussed the serpent quite a bit.  Here it could refer back to the story of Moses in the desert, quoted by Jesus:  14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3, KJV) or the conflation of Biblical types indicating that ultimately, the crucifixion was a victory over Satan. 

But the snake isn't looking very vanquished here.  Indeed; it seems to be quite friendly with the woman.  As wee have seen, Péguy seems fascinated by sacred women and in the "trinity" mentioned above, Eve and the Virgin are linked by the serpent, a link explicitly referred to in French Marial iconography.  As Eve is ostensibly responsible for mortality and the need for sexual intercourse to reproduce, Mary, with a sex-free conception, gave birth to the perfect man who could return us to immortality. "If you believe in that sort of thing," to quote my childhood hero Indiana Jones.  (See my essay here for more on this). 

But perhaps this is pushing it a bit far, as I've read else where that the woman is Athena.  Thus the serpent might represent Erichthonius, of whom Athena is the adoptive mother.  According to the tale, Hephaestus once tried to rape Athena and some semen shot onto her thigh.  She flicked the offending glob onto the ground.  It was from this that Erichthonius was born.  There are variations upon this tale.  Erichthonius may be the snake that accompnaied Athena, a mythical ruler who may have been half-serpent or, in a variation, was once seen with a snake coiled about him.  Thus in this context the serpent may represent wisdom or Athena's unviolated purity.  This would be in keeping with a nationalist rhetoric, or to commemorate the Resistance to foreign invaders.

La France, detail.  LoS photo.

I would also comment on the gesture in this statue.  It is said to be Athena scanning the horizon, but it also forms a kind of salute.  There is something of her gesture of the Venus of Lloret, although I may be pushing this a bit to far.  In that post I discussed that both Venus and Athena, according to some legends, were born as fully-grown, independent women.  This would also fit into a nationalist identity; the statue is called "La France" after all, and it is no one's child.

I found quite a bit more about this statue on a website containing extracts of an article originally appearing in Memoire Vive (2010), the journal of the Centre de Documentation Historique de l'Algérie.  I have translated and summarized the important bits as follows.

 

In 1922 or thereabouts, the French government decided to erect a monument commemorating the arrival of American troops at the end of WW1, in 1917.  It was to be built near Bordeaux and two architects (Ventre and Damour) thought about placing "La France" in front of a lighthouse, scouring the horizon for the arrival of allied troops.

Bourdelle was eventually chosen to execute the work and after some equivocation he took up the task.

The statue was to be 9 meters high, 3.4 meters wide and 1.4 meters deep.  Bourdelle chose to represent France with Pallas Athena in her aspect as warrior goddess, enveloped in snakes, allegedly representing wisdom, but which may have Biblical implications or involve metaphors of purity.  She indeed seems to be holding her arm up as if to look into the distance.  She has a shield and lance, this latter adorned with olive branches of peace (recall that "de Gaulle" may come a word for a pole used to beat olives from trees).

His niece served as the model for the figure, although it was apparently his secretary who posed for the arms.  It is said that when the latter asked why she was enveloped in snakes, Bourdelle smiled and said:  "As they say in France, be careful of the Americans."  (DSK would concur.  Come to think of it, both his tales of woe and Athena's involve an incriminating glob of semen....)

Apparently, four bronze examples of "la France" were made from the original models.

One was used by Bourdelle for his First World War memorial in Montauban.  I'm not sure when it was made, but the memorial was dedicated on November 13, 1932.  It is currently located on the esplanade of the Cours Foucault (pictured here).

Another decorated the entrance to the Grand Palais during the exposition of decorative arts in 1925.  It was stored away waiting for a planned museum of modern decorative arts and it lay there, abandoned.  It was later discovered by the mayor of Birançon, who contacted the artist's widow in order to acquire it for his town.  This one measured 4.55 m in height and was placed on the porch of the local Chateau, gazing over the peaks of the Alps. (pictured here).

In 1938, another example was placed at the exit of the train station of the Bois de Boulogne to salute the arrival a visit by English royals.  The exact location remains unknown and it would appear that this was in fact a gilded plaster copy destined for the Palais de Tokyo, later to become the Museum of Modern Art.

The copy which started this whole post, number four, was erected on June 18, 1948 to commemorate the "appel du 18 juin," the speech by de Gaulle in which Péguy was quoted.  It was erected at the instigation of General de Larminat, president of  the Association des Français Libres.  This rests upon a socle with a plaque honoring the memory of those who fought for Free France, adorned with the Cross of Lorraine.  It replaced the gilded plaster copy while awaiting work yet to be completed, an Apollo by Charles Despiau. 

That same year, de Larminat honored the FFL and colonel Colonna d'Ornano, killed in action in 1941, by placing a similar plaque on the socle of the Algiers version. It reads:

" Mère voici vos fils qui se sont tant battus

Aux volontaires des Forces Françaises Libres morts

pour l'honneur et la Liberté de la France

18 juin 1940, 9 mai 1945 "

This third version (1935) measured 9 meters (high, I assume) and had originally been placed at the entrance of the "foire d'Alger." After the foire, it was put on the terrace of the Musée de Beaux-Arts, where she scrutinized the Mediterranean.  This one has the most storied history. 

As a symbol of de Gaulle, the statue was blown up on the evening of November 26, 1961 by the OAS (Organisation armée secrète), a far-right group who despised de Gaulle for what they perceived as his treason towards Algeria, then a French Department, after his actions led to Algerian independence in 1962.  The socle was pulverized and the statue damaged. 

After this symbolic attack, the pieces were collected and stored until the statue could be repaired.  The French ambassador obtained permission to recover the statue but the French administration refused to pay for the transport cost, instead foisting the responsibility upon Paris' Bourdelle museum.  It was eventually taken to be repaired but the part of the support which depicted the snakes, as well as that part of the lance which held the olive branches, were too damaged to be repaired.  This lance was later sawed down in order for it to fit inside the museum of the Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan military academy.  A fitting tribute...this was where de Gaulle earned the nickname "the great asparagus."  Full circle.

La France, version three: 
http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/page/affichelieu.php?idLang=fr&idLieu=781

So, it took some digging but some interesting facts have been brought to light.  The version I saw seems largely forgotten, not quite as honored as her sisters elsewhere.  As I studied this curiosity, kids skateboarded below and a couple of French hipsters cadged cigarettes while a few yards away, hordes of people stood in line for the Basquiat expo.  Which somehow seems a fitting example of another Péguy quote:

"It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive."