Word: napoleons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
...Shot in the Dark. Four shots, in fact. A police car roars up to the porte-cochere of a chateau and out steps-sacrebleu!-it is the terror of Montmartre, the Napoleon of criminology! It is Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) of the Sureté. Fresh from his daring exploits in The Pink Panther, the inspector is a model of sangfroid. Beneath the vigorous mustache, the lips are ironical; beneath the snap-brim felt, the darting eyes see everything-well, everything except the goldfish pond. Splat...