In France, the giant naked woman above the church stirs passions

Paris - The planned gigantic statue of a naked woman near the historic abbey, which is on the UNESCO list, is now stirring passions in the French city of Tours and its surroundings. Already 4,000 people have signed a petition for the statue to be placed elsewhere; disputes over it are dividing local politicians, and the archbishop of Tours has also expressed reservations. Renowned sculptor Michel Audiard, who designed the statue, is ostentatiously bewildered, as the city council in Tours approved this project two years ago.
The statue is meant to represent a naked woman lying on her back and propped up on her elbows. It will measure 40 meters in length and 17 meters in height. Exhibition spaces are planned to be beneath her feet. The statue is to be named Woman of the Loire and, starting in 2013, it will be one of the "emblems" of the entire region.
It is to be located on the banks of the Loire, close to the Marmoutier Abbey, where Saint Martin, the bishop of Tours, lived in the 4th century, later becoming one of the most popular saints due to the legend that he shared his cloak with a beggar. The site is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The petition circulating through Tours and its surroundings does not question the artistic quality of the work but only its location. It is accompanied by a photomontage showing the woman's head and part of her body, including her breasts, towering high above the trees behind the historic abbey.
"If it were presented to me like this, I would sign it too," the sculptor told AFP. According to him, the work will hardly protrude above the treetops and will not be visible at all from Marmoutier.
However, outrage voices prevail in online debates. "A naked woman above the church, that reflects our society well," wrote one woman; others call for "shame," "provocation" and similar sentiments.
The Archbishop of Tours, Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin, expressed reservations about the project but did not condemn it openly.
The sculptor stated that the project has been in progress for three years, "and now, as luck would have it, a few months before the cantonal elections, this petition appears."
The petition is to be submitted to the Tours city council, which unanimously approved the project two years ago. However, now some of its members are hesitating. One of them, "by coincidence" from the opposition, said that the project was vague at the time, that the proposed site is not the most suitable, and that he mainly fears that UNESCO will remove the Loire Valley from its list because of the statue.
The organization resorts to such a step only in absolutely exceptional cases. Last year, it removed the Elbe Valley in Dresden from the list because a new bridge was built that disrupted the original character of the landscape.