No fig leaf for nude French gift to US city

A bronze statue of an unclothed boy—a gift to La Crosse from its sister city of Epinal in France—won’t have any fig leaf-like additions to cover its European-style nudity, city officials have eventually decided.

The statue Le Pinau, showing a boy in a seated position pulling a thorn from his foot, is symbolic of the French city whose name stems from a word meaning thorn.

But someone noticed that the groin area could be seen when viewing the statue from below the column on which it will be placed, prompting the city’s Contributions Committee to amend its resolution accepting the statue to allow for covering the critical area.