The meeting between the two families - the Bonaparte and the Faina families were connected by kinship: in April 1861 Zeffirino Faina married Luciana Bonaparte Valentini, the daughter of Maria Bonaparte and Vincenzo Valentini. Luciana was the grand-daughter of the Prince of Canino, whilst Zeffirino was the brother of the Count Mauro, the man who initiated the Faina collection in 1864.
There was a bond of respect and friendship between Mauro and Maria Bonaparte Valentini; she frequently invited the Count as her guest at her villa in Laviano near Chiusi and took her passion for archaeology from him. Indeed the first excavations directed by Mauro took place on land belonging to the Princess. He was certainly attracted to the character of Luciano Bonaparte, of whom he attempted to emulate the activity of archaeologist, albeit with decidedly inferior results. It was Mauro who received in donation (or possibly bought) from the Princess the documents relative to Luciano’s adventure in Vulci, that is to say two hand written notebooks, a series of lithographies by Luigi Maria Valadier and a corpus of drawings of the vases they discovered. In the 19th Century vaults of the Library of the Foundation for the “Claudio Faina” Museum there are also some printed works by Luciano, in particular the Catalogue of selected Etruscan antiques found during the excavation work of the Prince of Canino in Viterbo in 1829; the Etruscan Museum, Viterbo 1829; the Lithographic Atlas of the Etruscan Museum, an album of five tables produced as a complement to the work in the French language.
http://www.canino.info/inserti/bonaparte/valentini/index.htm
