Inscribed HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI (The Loyalty and Virtue of the Swiss) Thorvaldsen's limestone monument commemorates the members of the Royal Swiss Guards who died trying to protect Louis XVI in 1792 when the Tuileries were stormed. The inscription to the base of the panel (STUDIO C.PFYFFER ARTE A. THORWALDSEN OPERA L. AHORN) relates to the genesis of the work: conceived from an idea by a local patrician, Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen, a model was produced by Thorvaldsen (1819) which was subsequently reproduced on a grand scale a local sculptor, Lukas Ahorn. modelling of the lion owes much to Canova's work on the Tomb of Pope Clement XIII and that of Maria Christina. See H.W. Janson Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, Thames and Hudson, 1985, pp 72-73; and Fred Licht Canova, Abbeville Press, 1983, pp. 60 - 62.