Faith · Art · Museums · Science · Mores

Restorers at the Amsterdam Museum find a comet tattoo in a 17th century group portrait

Oldest Tattoo in Dutch Painting Discovered. Conservators have discovered the image of a tattoo while examining a seventeenth-century group portrait that had returned from an exhibition. Specialists at the Amsterdam Museum believe the tattoo, found on the wrist of the presumably wealthy merchant Wessel Smits, to be the oldest

Faith · Books · Observations · Rome

Julien Green on Pope Pius XI's blessing in Saint Peter's Square in 1935

Hundreds of young German Catholics in the square shouted "Heil!", stretching out their right arms. Shortly after noon I found myself in St Peter's Square, among several thousand people. From the balcony of the loggia the Supreme Pontiff (Pius XI, Pope from 1922 to 1939) blessed

Art

James Pradier's Venus with a Shell: an Unsung Masterpiece of Neoclassicism

The first half of the nineteenth century

A red chalk study of a foot on paper, with a handwritten inscription at the bottom.

NB! · Coming Up · Art

Christie's to Sell Michelangelo's Study for the Libyan Sibyl in February

In February Christie's will offer for sale Michelangelo's study of the foot of the Libyan Sibyl, made for the Sistine Chapel fresco. The study, in red chalk, is estimated at $1.5 to 2 million

NB! · Observations

Fill It In and Come Along

Observations · Society · Humour

Greta Thunberg Banned from Venice for 48 Hours After Dyeing the Water of the Grand Canal Green

And why, pray, forty-eight hours? It might at least have been two years, with twelve strokes of a willow switch on the *forbidden word thrown in. And make her scrub the canals for a couple of weeks besides

Archive · Books · Mores · Society · People

Leonid Brezhnev's memoirs of his mother Natalia Denisovna

By nationality I am Russian, by origin a native proletarian, a hereditary metalworker. That is all that is known of my ancestry In the memoirs of Leonid Brezhnev, which are believed to have been written from his words by several prominent journalists and editors of the day and merely edited

Archaeology · The East · Science

Gold coin of King Eucratides on the banknotes of the Central Bank of Afghanistan

Modern Afghan banknotes bear a reproduction of the Eucratides, the heaviest ancient gold coin ever discovered, minted under the Greek kings who ruled the region. Around the Dioscuri one can still read the inscription BAΣIΛEΩΣ MEΓAΛOY EYKRATIΔOY, that is, "of the Great King Eucratides", ruler of Bactria in

NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Mores

Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston, with his sons Nikolai and Felix in Cossack costume, 1890s

Faith · The East · Museums · New York · Ethnography

Costume of a Dancing Skeleton

Tibetan culture, late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Metropolitan Museum

Portrait of an elderly man in a white wig and dark coat with an order on his chest, against a dark background

Books · Observations

Joseph de Maistre’s book “Saint Petersburg Evenings”

Modern man has abolished symbolism, and meaning along with it. Joseph de Maistre, St Petersburg Dialogues

Art · Museums · Paris

Finnish painter Pekka Halonen featured in the “Ode to Finland” exhibition at the Petit Palais

The Petit Palais is holding an exhibition devoted to the Finnish artist Pekka Halonen (1865-1933), "Ode to Finland". In the self-portrait the artist is about 30 years old. Halonen is one of the key representatives of the Golden Age of Finnish painting. He studied in Helsinki

Alexandr Radayev