From the Christies description:
In 1753, Louis XV commissioned the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle to create a mausoleum in honor of one of his most illustrious military commanders, Maurice de Saxe, who had died three years earlier. A Protestant by faith, this prominent military figure was buried in the Lutheran Church of Saint-Thomas in Strasbourg. This ambitious royal project was, however, not inaugurated until 1777, after twenty-four years of planning and construction. A wax maquette had been presented as early as 1756 in the sculptor’s studio in the Louvre. Pigalle employed the sophisticated vocabulary of funerary sculpture, depicting the marshal descending the steps of his own tomb, surrounded by allegories of France the interceder, and Death.
Several designs and reproductions of the monument to Marshal de Saxe are known today, attesting both to the scale of the undertaking and to the exceptional legacy of Pigalle’s work. Among the earliest stages of the creative process is the famous wax “position” model now in the Louvre (inv. RF 1551). Another model was executed by Senckeisen, the son of a Strasbourg goldsmith, who had expressed his desire to reproduce the mausoleum group in wax in 1776 (mentioned in a letter addressed to Baron d’Autigny).
Likewise, a version donated by Mr. Albert Vernes to the Strasbourg Museum reproduces the general composition of the group in plaster. As is the case in the present relief, it features a narrative variation: Cupid is shown bareheaded, without a helmet—a choice Pigalle adopted only at a later stage of his work. Another reduction in marble, dated 1801, was donated by Baron Grouvel to the Strasbourg Historical Museum. Finally, various terracotta versions, sometimes limited to individual figures, complete this ensemble of reinterpretations.