Oscar Wilde's tomb

About

The tomb of Oscar Wilde, called Flying Demon Angel ("flying angel-demon"), is a funeral monument located in Paris at the cemetery of the Père-Lachaise (20th arrondissement). It was carved in a 20-ton block from 1911 to 1914 by Jacob Epstein, an American sculptor. Funded by Helen Carew, an admirer of the Irish writer, this monument is inspired by an Assyrian winged bull, preserved at the British Museum.

The grave is in Hopton Wood Stone from Hopton. Since 1950, it has also housed the ashes of Robert Ross, a lover and executor of Wilde's will. At the time, the work aroused indignation because of the exhibition of the prominent genitals of the angel overlooking the vault.

An anecdote is that, in 1961, two outcast English women seized stones on the edge of the aisle and shattered the testicles, which, for two years, served as a paper press for the curator of the cemetery. Oscar Wilde Funeral Monument, life grant number 55 PA 1909, 89th Division is listed as a historic monument by order of 10 March 1995. In 2011, it was restored (with the exception of the sex of the sphinx amputated in 1961, replaced by a silver prosthesis on an idea of...