Jean-Marie Bonnassieux

[
Le Puy-en-Velay]

Jean-Marie Bienaimé Bonnassieux (1810-1892) was a French sculptor.

The son of a cabinet maker from Lyon, Bonnassieux showed talent as a boy and was educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. In 1836 he was the co-winner (with Auguste Ottin) of the Prix de Rome. Bonnassieux subsequently taught at the Ecole, and among his students in the 1880s was the young American Lorado Taft.

Bonnassieux is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.

Work

* "Wisdom, Truth and Error", allegorical group on top of the Pavillon de Marsan, facing the Tuileries, at the Palais du Louvre, and other work at the Louvre from the 1850s through the 1870s
* "Groupe des Heures" over the clock, Lyon Bourse, 1858 and 1863
* architectural work at the Palais de Justice, Paris, 1868
* The bronze statue of "Notre-Dame de France" overlooking the town of Le Puy-en-Velay is made from 213 Russian canons taken in the Siege of Sebastopol (1854–1855) and was presented to the public on the 12th of September 1860 in front of 120,000 people.

Sources

* A Handbook of Modern French Sculpture, Daniel Cady Eaton
* Thierry Boyer-Bonnassieux