NAPOLEONIC RELICS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 86, 10 January 1928, Page 15

NAPOLEONIC RELICS

GIFT TO CITY OF ROME When Count Giuseppe Primoli died recently he left to the city of. Rome the rez-de-chaussee o£ his palace in the Tor di Nona quarter together with the collection of pictures, statues, documents, \ and other relics of Napoleonic interest that he had inherited from his mother. Princess Carlotta Bonaparte. Count Primoli, a man of exceptional taste and culture, added many precious relics to the collection -during his lifetime so that the city was delighted to accept so valuable and interesting a gift (says the “Queen”). The care of the palace and the putting in order of its. contents were given to Diego Angeli, an. Italian writer and critic, .well-known in. ■ the world of art, who, with infinite understanding and perfect taste, has arranged the beautiful rooms and salons in such a way that on entering one does not feel the atmosphere of. the museum but rather that of the dignified home of some gentleman of the Empire. Among the treasures are portraits of Josephine, “Madame,” Marie-Louise, brothers and sisters of Napoleon, and the little “King of Rome” by such artists as David, Gerome, Chevalet, and Canova. There are personal relics of the Great Man, too; clothes, books, the tobacco-case which Louis XVIII left Dehind him in'his flight after the return from Elba and which Napoleon kept for himself, and the certificate of his marriage to Marie-Louise, a singularly interesting document bearing the signatures of bride and bridegroom, of his mother, Murat, Eugenia, Ferdinand Augustus, Carl of Bourbon, and many others. To journalists the account of the Battle of Waterloo’ as published in a Milan newspaper of that date is not onlv a source of joy, but of instruction too? The entire account of the great battle occupies the first sheet of a tiny little paper (but the most important then published) which account, put into modern form, would perhaps pad out into half a column! The Museum was inaugurated by the Governor of Rome, and will be opened shortly to the public.