Word: napoleonism
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...Island of Corsica is notorious for its ill-tempered Cap Corse aperitifs, its vile figatelli sausage, and Napoleon, who left it as soon as he could. It is not known for art; yet the capital of Ajaccio (pop. 32,000) has a rich remnant of what was once one of Europe's greatest collections. Ajaccio used to think that the thousand paintings in the municipal museum were fakes, but the late Bernard Berenson disproved that judgment in 1959. Now the collection is becoming a focus of European art interest...
...While Napoleon was busy collecting countries, his maternal half uncle, a priest named Joseph Fesch, was busy collecting art. Pulling rank (he soon became a cardinal) Fesch acquired Dutch masters, Italian primitives and renaissance greats. Waterloo meant little to Fesch; he simply moved into the Vatican; but after that he had to rely more on his eye. Once in a junk shop he spied a cupboard with a finely painted door, even though one plank was missing. Later, he found the missing section as part of a stool. Today the picture is on view in the Vatican museum-Leonardo...
...study museum" in Ajaccio. The museum is still too small to show more than a fourth of the collection at a time, and there is no accurate catalogue for the Botticellis, Bellinis and Lorenzo di Credis that vie for wall space. Nevertheless it is, indirectly, the best thing Napoleon ever did for Corsica...
Socially, the Bonapartes always had a problem: while Napoleon conquered Europe, the family never conquered European society. This was a grave disappointment to all of them, including Napoleon I. Even after he became Emperor, he felt it necessary to suggest that the Bonapartes had been the Bourbons of Corsica, a claim that greatly amused his niece, Princess Mathilde Bonaparte. "If it had not been for Napoleon's armies," she once confessed, "I would be selling oranges on the quayside at Ajaccio...
Readymade Kings. Napoleon I, Author Aronson points out, had "an almost primitive sense of Corsican clannishness," and it led him to elevate his four brothers and three sisters to positions in the Empire that they were ludicrously unsuited to fill. After Austerlitz, for instance, he made his misanthropic brother Louis King of Holland; Brother Joseph became King of Naples; Brother Jérôme became King of Westphalia; Sisters Elisa, Caroline and Pauline received various duchies in Italy; and Napoleon's widowed mother became Son Altesse Impériale Madame la Mère de l'Empereur...