Church of St Vincent

In the choir of Saint-Vincent hangs one of the few religious paintings Jacques-Louis David ever made. He painted this Christ on the Cross in 1782, years before he became the painter of the Revolution and of Napoleon, for the family chapel of Marshal Louis de Noailles and his wife in the Capuchin church in Paris. The canvas is almost three metres tall. It reached Mâcon in 1818, going first to the city's courthouse, and the church's inventories record it from 1876.

The church around it is itself a product of the Empire. The town's medieval cathedral had been largely demolished after the Revolution, and when Napoleon and Josephine came through Mâcon in 1805 the emperor granted the city money for a new place of worship. Alexandre Guy de Gisors, one of the regime's official architects, designed it as a neoclassical building in the Greek manner, and it was dedicated in 1816 to Saint Vincent and Saint Louis. People in Mâcon still call it the cathedral, although the town has had no bishop of its own since the Revolution.

Inside, the ceiling carries trompe-l'œil decoration by the painter Bussière. The David left the choir in 2017 for an exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris, and then came back to the same wall.