And now let us take a look at Judith by the Italian painter Fede Galizia

Good heavens, what is the matter with this woman? Why is her face so serene, with the faintest smile? She has, after all, just cut off a man's head. Yet nothing in her appearance betrays the murder so recently committed.

True, painters always give Judith this blissful tranquillity of expression. The idea is that she feels herself to be the instrument of God's will, the executrix of a lofty mission. And the idealised face merely underlines her strength.

So the art historians explain it.

But are we not dealing here with dissociation, emotional numbness, or even psychopathy?

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

And now let us take a look at Judith by the Italian painter Fede Galizia

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s