Leon Mignon, young Ponchinello

Léon Mignon (Liège, April 9, 1847 - Schaerbeek, September 30, 1898) was a Belgian sculptor working in a realistic idiom, known for depicting bulls.

Born in Liège, Léon Mignon graduated from the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Liège in 1871. He showed for the first time at the Salon in Ghent and received a scholarship from the Fondation Darchis for further studies in Italy.

He established his studio in Paris in 1876 in collaboration with Paul de Vigne, and then settled permanently in Schaerbeek. He won a gold medal at the Paris Salon for his sculpture Li Tore, Bull-Tamer (illustration), which provoked polemics among critics for combining nudity with direct realism.

Founded in Liège, Li Tore became the mascot of the students who hid her in the basement of the Académie to protect her during World War II. The bull has become a symbol for all Liège, with the city's motto "Liège, forcer l'avenir!", "Liège, make the future happen!"

A bronze on a similar subject, his Le Dompteur de Taureaux (1881), which was spotted in a retrospective exhibition of Belgian sculpture the previous year (in his plaster model) and endorsed by Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns, Minister of the Interior, stands on Terrasses d 'Avroy, Liège. Although a scarf was added to the model to hide the nakedness of the figure, the sculpture scandalized the editors of the Catholic daily La Gazette de Liège [1].

One of his more animal sculptures is in the Botanical Garden of Brussels: the Olive Tree or the Room representing a farm worker with his ox. His early Combat de taureaux dans la campagne romaine has been preserved at the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

Other sculptures are Hide and Seek and Lady Godiva.

Both Schaerbeek and Liège have rue Léon Mignon.