Rejected three times by the academy and accused of faking his first masterpiece, he turned a career of scandals into modern sculpture itself.

A Frankish warlord who could not sign his name conquered half a continent, revived its learning, and became the emperor every later age fought to claim.

A condemned general with no army told a defeated France it had not surrendered — then spent thirty years making the nation ratify the claim.

He served six regimes and betrayed most of them — yet twice, when France lay beaten, the turncoat was the only man who could save it.

He chased the fleeting instant for sixty years, then went half-blind and answered by giving France a room of water and light without end.