Page of an old French book with rhymed text, with the start of Scene IV at the bottom, where Anne speaks alone.

Books · Monarchies · People

Anna Leopoldovna in Fallot’s 1765 tragedy “The Death of Ivan”

"We shall see time change our misfortunes." "That time is far off, for a perverse world will seek the means to oppose, unceasingly, the happiness of our days." Without hope, without illusions, and with prophetic accuracy, Anna Leopoldovna, condemned to confinement for the rest of her

Archive · Books · Observations

Pyotr Vyazemsky in 1875 on the tact of historians and untimely truth about the dead

The cemetery and the graves, too, must be treated with care and reverence. It is neither fitting nor proper to carry into the churchyard all manner of rumour and gossip, of the kind on which the salons of the living subsist. Voeikov used to say: with the dead there is

Art · People · Pop Culture

Swimming costumes created by Sonia Delaunay in the 1920s, when the bulky bathing dresses that covered the whole body gave way to more compact, close-fitting swimsuits with bare arms and legs

Delaunay's first swimsuits were still made of knitted fabric, wool jersey, but later began to be produced in silk as well. Sonia Delaunay was a French artist, a native of the Poltava Governorate, who grew up in Odessa and Saint Petersburg and left to study in Europe at

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Pop Culture · Humour

Lady Gaga Has Died

Lady Gaga has died. At least, so we must believe if we trust a letter reporting on a Lady Gaga who lived in ancient Babylon

NB! · Aristocracy · Observations · Mores · Pop Culture · Humour

I don't see anything funny here, by the way: the lady might have stood up for the birds that had taken up residence in her wig

I don't see anything funny here, by the way: the lady might have stood up for the birds that had taken up residence in her wig. A pity that in 1775 mercy was not in fashion to the same degree as extravagant coiffures. Still, the aristocrats of the

NB! · Art

A Bear by an Unknown Sixteenth-Century Artist

Observations · Society · People

Two views of Robespierre, dictator of the Terror and defender of France

Since so much attention has been paid to beheading in French history, one might also recall the execution of Robespierre, who mounted the scaffold on the night of 27 to 28 July 1794, 230 years ago. On the one hand, this was the end of the Terror, the death of

Art · Museums · Paris

Official Gold Badge of a Member of the Jury of the 1900 Summer Olympic Games

Artist: Louis Alexandre Bottée. On the tongue of the reverse, the label “Christofle, orfèvres, Paris”.

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · People

Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Joseph Kreutzinger and the Children of Maria Theresa

Marie Antoinette in hunting dress. The portrait by Joseph Kreutzinger of 1771 was one of the favourites of Marie Antoinette's mother, Empress Maria Theresa, although she disliked her daughter's habit of hunting on horseback. Maria Theresa, herself a legendary woman of European history, had 16 children.

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Education · People

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford. How quickly other people's princesses grow up

NB! · People · Pop Culture · Humour

The French freak-singer Philippe Katerine as a drunken Silenus, or perhaps the embodiment of the allegory of alchemical mercury, which refers to Mercury and personifies both the passage from the higher to the lower and androgyny?

Faith · Observations · Society · Paris

The Olympic flame and ancient cults in the post author's reading of Games rituals

In essence, the Olympic Games are in fact a ritual. And by no means a Christian one. Only now, however, does the mystical, dark side of the rites attached to the "Games" become plainly visible. The Olympic flame is a tribute to Prometheus, who stole fire from the

Alexandr Radayev