Let's go! The Nice carnival (Alpes-Maritimes) started this Saturday, this year in honor of the King of fashion. Tens of thousands of spectators (we even exceeded 200,000 visitors last year) are expected until Saturday February 29. Unfortunately, however, fewer Chinese tourists will travel, as some reservations have been canceled due to the coronavirus epidemic.
This year, one of the floats that should make people speak represents the Macron couple with a Stéphane Bern wearing a king's jester hat. Each year, floats are talked about, in the great tradition of carnival impertinence. As in the 1912 edition, for example.
From the café terraces to the pavement, we stick together and laugh. Quietly installed in his small studio in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, does Vincenzo Peruggia hear this crowd gathered in Place de la République? Does he suspect that his mischief is a pretext for mocking the police, barely 300 m from his home? This March 12, 1912, the Nice Carnival was exceptionally invited to the capital by the Petit Journal which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. The party is in full swing.
A month earlier, as every year for thirty years, the same floats, all as crazy as each other, paraded in the city on the French Riviera, in the midst of tens of thousands of inhabitants and tourists.
Inspiration in the news
The organizers only had to look for inspiration in the news item that all of France is talking about. Some take offense, others laugh. But nobody remains indifferent to the flight of "the Mona Lisa", in the Louvre museum, on August 21, 1911.
Peruggia, a modest Italian glazier and the author of larceny, had just worked there to put the most prestigious works under glass. He took advantage of a closing day to steal the work by hiding it under his blouse, before continuing his quiet life in Paris for more than two years. What a great opportunity to mock the police, unable to get their hands on it, say the Nice carnivalists!
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Six months after the flight, in February 1912, three tanks were specially created. The first represents an individual riding a lionfish, which we tend to cook in bouillabaisse. The crowd recognizes him immediately by his costume: he is one of the "Pegomas bandits", perpetrators in previous months in the region of "a whole series of murders, fires, robberies more odious than the ones the others, "reports the press. The bandit hides under his arm a replica of "the Mona Lisa", while snubbing. He is pointed at by the King of the carnival, who follows him a few tens of meters on a second chariot.
Bursts of laughter along the Louvre
The show is still in its infancy. Here come the guards of the Louvre, drowsy when they are not drunk. The height of ridicule: the donkey pulling their cart is wearing the tiara of Saïtapharnès, acquired by the Louvre in 1896 but which turned out to be a fake.
This chariot of the Louvre guards, "the determined air of the dogs who are joined to them, raises storms of laughter and the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd", relates the Petit Journal to its front page on March 13. The same buffoonish procession as in Nice then travels through the beautiful districts of central Paris, from Port-Royal to République via Place de la Madeleine. Rue de Rivoli, we burst out laughing along the Louvre, still deprived of its "Mona Lisa". Intrigued by this hubbub, the luckiest spectators flock to the window of their apartments.
They may make fun of the police, but the organizers thank Divisional Commissioner Noriot for the efficient order service. At 6:15 am, "the lights come on little by little over Paris and it is in the splendor of a magical perspective that this wonderful spectacle ends that the capital will not soon forget", poeticizes the Petit Journal.
A horse nearly two years old
The police will still take almost two years to find Vincenzo Peruggia. His recklessness and his greed for profit will have got the better of him. At the end of 1913, the one his colleagues nicknamed "macaroni" went to his hometown of Florence, to try to sell "the Mona Lisa". Customs officials at the border north of Nice see nothing but fire, as they have not searched the trunk transported by train well enough. But an antique dealer ends up denouncing it in December. Sentenced to one year in prison, Peruggia will spend seven months behind bars.
In 1921, after several editions canceled due to the Great War (in which Peruggia participated in the Italian army), the carnival again hosted a copy of "the Mona Lisa". "Here I am again," says the chariot. At the same time, and as in 1912, the painting - the real one - was in Paris. No longer hidden in the cubbyhole of the modest apartment of an Italian immigrant worker, but once again hung in the museum already the most visited in the world. Something to give Mona Lisa her famous smile.
Politics on a tank!
We do not choose to be mocked at the Nice carnival, and politicians, especially the 2017 presidential candidates in France, are well placed to know this. Since Jacques Chirac, many of them have had the right to their giant doll. The former president who died in September 2019 had even been designated "King of the party" in 2007. In 2010, Bernadette Chirac, Arlette Laguiller, and Ségolène Royal had been treated to a cheerleader costume.
The characters change, but the mocking spirit remains the same in 2017, with a Donald Trump caricatured as a terrible waster. Barrels of pierced oil were placed at his feet, while his blond wick was disheveled by electric hair dryers. "The tank was decided when the election of Trump (Editor's note: in November 2016) was still just a joke," said the Nice tourist office.
