Stamatis Voulgaris
During the Russian-Turkish siege of 1798–1799, while in the vicinity of the San Giacomo theater in Corfu, a cannon ball fired from a Russian vessel fell beside young Voulgaris without immediately exploding.
He immediately grabbed the fuse and then neutralized it, thus saving the theater and a whole French military detachment which passed nearby with heavy weapons and ammunition.
He became an engineer geographer and an extraordinary designer in the service of the ministry's Dépôt de la Guerre (a depository of maps and archives).
When he was released, he undertook a new special mission in Epirus and Albania, then was recalled to France to fight at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
After Napoleon's defeat, he was removed from the army by the Bourbon Restoration, then was reinstated and raised to the rank of captain of the General Staff.
[5][6] This colony of landscape artists (called the "open airists"), grouping painters such as Charles-François Daubigny, Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet or Gustave Courbet, were coming together a few kilometers from Paris to work in the forest of Fontainebleau which was for them a source of inspiration.
Corot drew several portraits of Voulgaris, "in his bed" or "sitting in front of his easel" (he wrote at the bottom of the latter with a graphite stylus: "Stamati Bulgari in rage with reason").
[7][9] Since 1821, the Greek War of Independence was raging in Greece, which had not left Voulgaris indifferent: in 1825 he wrote in his Souvenirs: "Grecs, aux armes!
The two men met first in Italy in Ancona, and then embarked together aboard the frigate HMS Warspite for Nafplio in Greece, where they arrived on 7 January 1828.
Kapodistrias asked Voulgaris to conduct a study on the search for a suitable location in the city to build a colony for war refugees.
The city, with a geometric composition, took the form of a large parallelogram bordering the coastal area and of a second ending at the periphery of the old town.
[14] He also planned to build nine symmetrical public squares, quays, vast and long boulevards or avenues bordered by trees and perfectly ventilated, fountains, arcades, green areas round the Patras Castle and three main doors which would open on the roads to Gastouni, Kalavryta and Corinth.
