A wealth of online art
It’s not the same as seeing them in person, but it’s all we’ve got right now. The Louvre has put every one of its 480,000 artworks online, including those in the reserves. (CNN)
French family to profit from forgotten Fragonard
It’s a dream to find a painting worth €1.5 million hiding in plain sight on your living-room wall. (RFI)
The baguette it is!
The baguette won out over Paris’s rooftops as France’s candidate for Unesco’s “intangible heritage” status. (France24)
Here’s why France has so many anti-vaxxers
It’s hard to trust the government and big pharma when there have been so many lies and medical scandals in France, among them tainted blood given to hemophiliacs, breast implants that explode in the body and a diet pill that kills. A conviction has just been handed down in the last-mentioned case. (Euronews)
Bonaparte in New Jersey
Many Americans are probably not aware that Napoleon had laid out detailed plans to spend the rest of his life in the United States, but before he could carry out his plan, the British sent him to his final exile in St. Helena. His brother Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain and Naples, however, did make it across the Atlantic and settled on a lavish estate in New Jersey. (Smithsonian Magazine)
Embarrassing auction blooper
There was no way they could get away with it, so it must have been an honest mistake when the recently rediscovered Vincent Van Gogh painting was sold twice at the same auction, for €13.1 million and €11.25 million. (Metro)