Number 42
2018
Summary
The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the Monegasque sculptor François-Joseph Bosio (1768-1845), eminent representative of neoclassicism in the early nineteenth century, offers the opportunity of two studies: a monograph of an emblematic work, unique and multiple, the Henry IV child, by a curator of the Louvre; a historiographical retrospective on the representation and the monegasque memory of the artist, erected as a national hero. The tercentenary of the foundation of the city of New Orleans gives the opportunity to a specialist of French emigration in the United States to be interested in the ascendants of Alice Heine, "first American princess of Monaco", second wife of Prince Albert I, whose Alsatian maternal family joined Louisiana in the early nineteenth century, after passing through Santo Domingo and Cuba.
The three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the composer Couperin reminds us that he had found a muse in Monaco, in the person of a daughter of Prince Antoine I, to whom he dedicates a harpsichord piece. Granddaughter of Lucien Bonaparte, Marie Rattazzi (1831-1902) was a prominent woman of letters and a salonnière in vogue at the end of the 19th century. She frequented Monaco and its princes, wanting to be the muse. To evoke the relation to the sea of Albert I may seem to belong to the commonplace, repeated to envy. The reflection still remained to be led, from three angles, all experienced by the prince during his career as a navigator: at once shipwrecked, rescuer and protector of the maritime environment. In 2017, the "Explorations de Monaco" were launched to better "love, know and protect" the oceans, in the wake of Prince Albert I's expeditions. Madeira was the first stage and was the site of an exhibition dedicated to the discovery of the archipelago, between 1879 and 1912, by the "prince scientist". A thematic file reports on the event. The current restoration campaign of the palace's painted decorations has brought to light, not only a set of new Renaissance frescoes in the Grand Apartments, but also an unpublished archive, which is the "document of the year", and which gives, for the first time and irrefutably, a name, probably among others, for the realization of the wall paintings of the sixteenth century.
