Aristocracy · Architecture · Art · Observations · Humour

Ceramic pavilion “Wedding Cake” by Joana Vasconcelos at Waddesdon Manor

The 12-metre ceramic pavilion "Wedding Cake" by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos. The present day. Waddesdon Manor in the English county of Buckinghamshire, property of the Rothschild Foundation. The author calls her work a building, an immersive sculpture. At first glance it appears a rather striking structure,

Art · Museums · Paris · Rome

Paris, Rue Saint-Merri

Judith and Holofernes, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, collection of the Palazzo Barberini

Archaeology · Architecture · Science

Lifting devices of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, from levers to the rotating crane

The illustrations of the building of the Aqua Claudia show Roman construction machinery made entirely of wood and driven by human muscle. Sophisticated hoisting machines existed in Ancient Egypt too, though they bore little resemblance to modern cranes, being systems of inclined planes and levers. A crane similar to those

Renaissance painting: a seated child with beads and six nude female figures of different ages, from a girl to an old woman in a head cloth, against a dark stormy sky.

NB!

Hans Baldung Grien, The Seven Ages of Woman, c. 1544

NB! · Art · People

Hans Baldung, paintings on the theme of the three (seven) ages of woman and death

Hans Baldung, paintings on the theme of the three (seven) ages of woman and death. 1520s–1540s.

Oil portrait of a dark-haired man with a full beard in a loose grey smock, seated on a chair by a table against a dark brown background, looking directly at the viewer.

NB!

Painted portrait of a bearded man in a grey smock

Aristocracy · Books · Observations · Mores

The wife of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy was called Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya, just like the wife of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Counts Alexei Konstantinovich (1817-1875) and Lev Nikolayevich (1828-1910) were second cousins to one another

Miniature of a teacher in an orange robe seated in a courtyard, surrounded by pupils with books and sheets on a patterned carpet beneath white domes.

The East · Art · Books · Education · Humour

A schoolroom scene in a miniature from Saadi's “Gulistan” manuscript, 1567/8

Disorder in the classroom. A pupil does not obey his teacher. A tale as old as time. From a manuscript of Saadi's «Gulistan», 1567/8, attributed to Mir Ali Husayni of Bukhara

NB! · Observations · People

It's Just That Sort of Day

It's just that sort of day. Dmitri Shostakovich

Black and white still of a creature in heavy make-up with tangled hair reaching forward, beside the words “Frankenstein 1910”.

Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

The first screen adaptation of “Frankenstein” in 1910 runs for 12 minutes

A Hundred Years Ago the TikTok Girls Were More Talented. Poster for the first screen adaptation of Frankenstein, 1910. The film runs for 12 minutes and is packed with metaphors of the meaning of existence and the search for the capacity to feel in earnest. The Monster looks more modern

Archive · Books · People

Glinka on how the partisan Davydov burned his own house in Borodino before the battle

It turns out that the village of Borodino belonged to Denis Davydov, who became famous in the war of 1812. Sergey Nikolayevich Glinka recalls that the partisan Davydov set fire to his own house in Borodino with his own hands, before a battle had even been appointed to take place

Faith · Art · Books

When, like the high-soaring Icarus, we beat our way up towards the heavens, the Almighty singes our wings a little, that we may fly somewhat lower

When, like the high-soaring Icarus, we beat our way up towards the heavens, the Almighty singes our wings a little, that we may fly somewhat lower. Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who knew not by what means to bring his son out of the labyrinth (that is, out of

Alexandr Radayev