BONNASSIEUX, Jean-Marie Bienaimé

French sculptor. The son of a cabinetGLOSSARYA small, private room where works of art, valuables and curiosities were kept and contemplated at leisure; over time the term was used for the collections themselves. Renaissance cabinets played an important role in the development of museums and art galleries. maker from Lyon, Bonnassieux showed talent as a boy and was educated at the École des Beaux-Arts under Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. In 1836 he was the co-winner (with Auguste Ottin) of the Prix de RomeGLOSSARYA scholarship, founded concurrently with the French Academy in Rome (1666), that enabled prize-winning students at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris to spend a period (usually 4 years) in Rome at the state's expense. Prizes for architecture began to be awarded regularly in 1723, and prizes for engravers and musicians were added in the 19th century. The prizes were meant to perpetuate the academic tradition and during the 18th and 19th centuries winning the award was the traditional stepping stone to the highest honours for painters and sculptors. Many distinguished artists (as well as many nonentities) were Prix de Rome winners, notably David, Fragonard, and Ingres among painters and Clodion, Girardon, and Houdon among sculptors. The prizes are still awarded and the system has been adopted by other countries.. Bonnassieux subsequently taught at the École, and among his students in the 1880s was the young American Lorado Taft.

His bronzeGLOSSARYAn alloy of copper (usually about 90 per cent) and tin, often also containing small amounts of other metals such as lead or zinc. Since antiquity it has been the metal most commonly used in cast sculpture because of its strength, durability, and the fact that it is easily workable - both hot and cold - by a variety of processes. It is easier to cast than copper because it has a lower melting-point, and its great tensile strength makes possible the protrusion of unsupported parts - an advantage over marble sculpture. The colour of bronze is affected by the proportion of tin or other metals present, varying from silverish to a rich, coppery red, and its surface beauty can be enhanced when it acquires a patina. 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.

Bonnassieux is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.