Vatican Museums

In 1950, Fr. Marie-Alain Couturier commissioned a stained-glass window by Fernand Léger for the apse wall of the Église du Sacré-Cœur at Audincourt, designed by the architect Maurice Novarina. At the end of the same year the first studies were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, giving rise to concern among some of the local authorities. The artist therefore decided to allow the sketches to be examined directly by the population of Audincourt, who supported Léger’s proposal of a strip composed of 17 large segments, dedicated to the Glorification of the martyrdom of Christ. Produced in 1952 in the workshop of the master glassmaker Jean Barillet, the work in the Collection was intended for the fourth panel on the left side of the Church but was never mounted as it was substituted by another, considered chromatically more suited to the set as a whole.