BONNASSIEUX, Jean-Marie Bienaimé - b. 1810 Panissières, d. 1892 Paris

French sculptor. The son of a cabinet 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 Rome. Bonnassieux subsequently taught at the École, and among his students in the 1880s was the young American Lorado Taft.

His 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.

Bonnassieux is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.

Our Lady of France (Notre-Dame-de-France)

In 1854 Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: France, blessed with appearances of the Virgin at Lourdes in 1858, places itself under her protection. Several monumental Virgins were erected under the Second Empire, the most famous being Our Lady of France, made with the proceeds of a national subscription (214.649 francs), to which in 1856 Napoleon III added the gift of 100.000 kilograms of iron melted down from the 213 cannons captured at Sebastopol. The figure was erected on a residual volcanic hill, the Rocher des Dons, at Le Puy, and the effigy at its feet is that of Monsignor Morlhon, promoter of the statue.