ABSTRACT
When Diderot saw a model for the monument to France's great eighteenth-century soldier, the Maréchal de Saxe, he protested against the sculptor's ‘half-historical, half-allegorical jumble’ of images, saying that he would have preferred a memorial that was ‘simpler’ and ‘newer’ in its design ( plate VI. 1). According to Diderot it would have been far more appropriate to show the marshal reclining in his last hour, accompanied by only two soldiers, instead of a skeleton of Death, a Hercules and a personification of France. 1 Diderot's comments, made when he saw the model exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1767, highlighted the changes that were beginning to take place in contemporary European taste with regard to funerary works. This fundamental change from one generation to the next can be seen if one compares the Saxe monument with a later one to another hero, Lord Nelson ( plate VI. 2). The Saxe monument looks backwards in its design, whereas that of Nelson represents in many ways a newer outlook.
