Archive · Art · Books
A late medieval miniature by the artist known as the Master of Adelaide of Savoy illustrates one of the most mysterious episodes of the Arthurian cycle: the supernatural conception of Merlin. According to the medieval legendarium, the wizard Merlin was begotten by a demon who visited a pious maiden, wishing
NB! · The East · Art · Books · Saint Petersburg
Alexander Orlovsky's illustrations to Gaspard Drouville's "Journey to Persia". Saint Petersburg, 1819–1821. A remarkable example of early Russian lithography.
Art · Cinema · Observations · Humour
The Cherrys have the 1919 canvas "Jeanne Hébuterne Seated in Front of a Door"; Lyudmila Prokofyevna has "Girl in a Sailor Suit" of 1918. To be honest, our Modigliani looks even better, without any candelabra or gilding, simply and in a thoroughly modernist spirit
Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Society · Paris
A few days ago at the Louvre, a portrait of the loathsome Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, stripped of his title of Prince, was stuck to a wall. The news calls the people who did it activists. Naturally, they have some political or moral justification for their demonstration. In principle, after all,
Books · Monarchies · Society · Humour
Our men of ill repute... judge themselves and pardon themselves Ivan the Terrible, in his letter to Prince Kurbsky and in his epistle to Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, 1570s
NB! · Architecture · Art · Ethnography
The 51-metre panel "Mother Earth", made of birch wood and installed in the atrium of the new government building in Oslo. The panel's creator is the Finnish-born, renowned Sámi artist Outi Pieski
Observations · Heritage · Society · Pop Culture
A studio with thirty full-time employees and a host of outside consulting firms worked on the game for seven years, yet it is estimated to have sold fewer than 2,000 copies. Although nobody is actually playing Relooted (in Russian, Pereukradeno), it has received wide coverage in the leading
Archive · Geography · Mores · Nature
The Children and the Young Raven. The children found an injured young raven in the forest and nursed it back to health. It became quite tame and lived in the geologists' camp until the middle of summer. Shortly before the camp was due to move from the Arkhangelsk Region
Faith
O my soul, O my soul, arise, why sleepest thou; the end is nigh, and ruin draweth near to thee. Be watchful, lest thou slumber and be weakened by sleep, lest thou lose Christ God, the Master, as Isaiah spoke in the time of night the Byzantine theologian and hymnographer
In the Press · Observations · Pop Culture
Good Lord, Gucci creative director Demna Gvasalia has issued a manifesto on his vision of the brand. These manifestos are always one and the same, but this time reading it leaves a particularly odd sensation. A little water and pathos to begin with: "A house that has lived many
Archive · Observations · Science
If you wish to reflect on the development of the Russian Empire towards the end of its existence, imagine that by the 1900s Russia already had a submarine of its own and, in all likelihood, more than one. In the photograph, presumably of 1901, is Russia's first electrically
Faith · Art · Heritage
The picture was painted to a local commission, at a time when the cult of the saint venerated here had suffered from the theft of her relics. In this large-format altarpiece, measuring three metres by four, the body of the beheaded martyr Lucy of Syracuse is shown in the