Jules Massenet, Bronze sculpture in Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, France

The Massenet monument is a tall rectangular stone stele carved with a bas-relief profile of the composer at the top, his name "MASSENET" inscribed in capitals below. Against its face sits a full-length stone statue of a hooded woman in a laced bodice, with a small standing female figure carved at her lower left. Raoul Verlet made it in 1926; it stands among greenery.

Raoul Verlet created the monument, inaugurated in 1926, the year after Jules Massenet died in 1912. The stone stele carries a carved profile of the composer above his name and a seated female figure below. Verlet was a sculptor from Angoulême who also made the Massenet monument in that city.

The seated hooded woman on the monument is a figure from Massenet's opera Sapho, set in the world of 19th-century Paris. The composer, who taught at the Conservatoire, is shown in profile above her, and the lettering of his name is the detail most visitors look for first.

The monument stands in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in the 6th arrondissement, near the garden's western side by the rue Guynemer entrance. Approach on foot through the garden gates; the surrounding gravel and paved paths let you view the stone face and its carved figures from several angles.

The seated hooded woman on the monument is a figure from Massenet's opera "Thaïs", carved in stone rather than cast in bronze. The sculptor Raoul Verlet completed the monument in 1926, nine years after the composer's death, and the bas-relief portrait of Massenet appears above the name carved in capitals.