Father Ouf was obviously as active in real life as his dynamic-sounding surname suggests. He was the priest who in the 1880s rehabilitated, restored and rearranged the little church of Saint Romain near Rouen railway station, in particular transferring the cover of the 16th-century baptismal font (which originally came from the church of Saint Etienne des Tonneliers) from the back of the church to the chapel situated to the right of the choir. What a dedicated priest had done, however, could only too easily be undone by a handful of louts, and a hundred years later it seemed far too dangerous to leave this early 16th-century masterpiece in a church where acts of vandalism were becoming increasingly common. The result was that in 1993 it was finally transferred to the city’s art museum.    

This sculpture is quite simply the only example of its kind among all the works of early Renaissance religious art to be found in Rouen.