I had initially thought that this sculpture from the early 1300s had been damaged at some time over the centuries. But, it’s actually a representation of St. Denis. As for this story, St Denis had his head cut off because third century Roman authorities were not especially keen on Christians, which was, from his point of view, rather inconvenient and somewhat sub-optimal. According to the legend, he then picked up his own head and carried on walking, which is an extremely strong commitment to making an entrance and must have come across as very brave. So the skull came off in a martyrdom, but the story became famous because St Denis apparently treated decapitation as more of a setback than a full stop.
The exhibit was moved from the city’s Wallraf-Richartz Museum in 1929 and it was made in Cologne. It’s made from walnut and it looks like the colours were quite vibrant.
I did my usual thing of reverting to AI to see how it might have looked, but ChatGPT wasn’t having any of it. It decided that it was a violent image and noted:
“We’re so sorry, but the image we created may violate our content policies. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.”
Google Gemini doesn’t have the same sensitive tendencies, but I think it might have gone a bit full on colour here.