The finely carved head is a fragment of the Porte des Valois at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis. The importance of this monument in the art and architecture of twelfth-century France cannot be overstated. The Porte des Valois, carved about 1160–70, was not erected in its present location on the north transept until the thirteenth century. The relief carvings of the portal depict the martyrdom of Saint Denis. This fragment appears to have come from the lintel, which illustrates the judgment of Saint Denis and his companions before the Roman prefect. Removed during the French Revolution, the head illustrates the high quality of the sculpture produced at Saint-Denis a generation after the famous Royal Portal of the west facade. As the scholar Willibald Sauerlander has noted, the Porte des Valois holds "a key position at the phase marking the transition from the austerely restrained figure-conception of the royal portals to the more relaxed sculptural style of the last years of the century." Other fragments of the portal are in the Musée du Louvre. The Metropolitan Museum also has the only column figure to survive from the cloister of the abbey (acc. no. 20.157), roughly contemporary in date with the Porte des Valois.