He conceived the tympanum and 35 statues relating to the life of the Virgin for Sées's cathedral in 1852 and, for his birthplace of La Rochelle, he designed a monument to M. Fleuriau de Bellevue (bust and bas-relief in bronze) in 1853.
The façade is in Renaissance style; the gate, sometimes attributed to Jean Bullant, consists of a tympanum leading to columns grooved in Corinthian capitals, the whole surrounded by a very decorated classic entablature, surmounted in the extremities by two roof lanterns.
The subject seems to first appear in art, unusually, in England, where a tympanum over the door of the church at Quenington in Gloucestershire of perhaps 1140 may be the earliest surviving depiction, and there is another in Reading, Berkshire.
She continues to supply the chief type even during imperial times, being generally shown seated with the tympanum in her hand.
The entrance is flanked by two Tuscan columns and accessed by an exterior staircase, covered with a gabled roof made of slabs of stone, with a pediment with trim at the edges and a smooth tympanum without decoration.
The church also has several Romanesque details dating from the Norman era, including a Priest's Door ("uncommonly ornate", according to Nikolaus Pevsner) with a finely carved tympanum; the empty circular niche in the tympanum is said to have held a relic; the birds in roundels to either side are probably eagles, as one is legendarily supposed to have sheltered Medard from the rain.