How to be Insulting to Connoisseurs

The great nineteenth-century painter, Joseph Turner, found himself locked in conversation with a self-appointed authority on the 'great masters'. The lady in question was praising Cimabue with the sort of mindless and ill-informed nonsense that made Turner see red.

'Do you seriously think, your ladyship, that any of his works compare with those of the great Florentine, Mortadella da Bologna?' asked Turner, when he could get a word in edgeways.

'But how much better is Cimabue's colour,' she said.

'Not if you are a connoisseur of Italian sausages, Madame,' replied the artist triumphantly.