Aristocracy · Archive · People

The father of the White émigré spy Anna Volkova, Nikolai Alexandrovich, belonged to that very Volkov-Muromtsev family, tied to the Griboyedovs by bonds of both marriage and property

The father of the White émigré spy Anna Volkova, Nikolai Alexandrovich, belonged to that very Volkov-Muromtsev family, tied to the Griboyedovs by bonds of both marriage and property. Nikolai's own brother Vladimir Volkov-Muromtsev, disinherited by their father, by an irony of fate became in 1895 the

London · Mores · Society · People · Pop Culture

How a Russian Fashionista Spied for Nazi Germany

In 1940, Anna Volkova-Muromtseva, a White émigré and the daughter of the last naval attaché of the Russian Empire in England, was arrested in London. Anna Nikolayevna was charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. Volkova was an active member of the Right Club, an opponent of Britain'

A boatman in a small boat on a blue river: a green shore with tiny angels on the left, a dark shore with fire and a stone gateway on the right, under a cloudy sky.

NB!

Joachim Patinir, Charon Crossing the Styx

Art · Madrid · Museums · Society · Nature

The Prado Museum and WWF show the effects of climate change in paintings by Velázquez and Goya

The Prado Museum and WWF have illustrated the consequences of climate change with great paintings from the museum's collection. Diego Velázquez's Philip IV is drowning, horse and all; Joachim Patinir's crossing to the underworld has run dry; Joaquín Sorolla's Children on the

Detail of a painting: a pale, nude woman with auburn hair and a tear on her cheek, while a yellowish figure of Death with a skull for a face presses its mouth to hers.

Art · Mores · Humour

Hans Baldung's painting “Woman and Death”

There is nothing so terrible in such a difference in age. Hans Baldung, Woman and Death

Art · Cinema · Pop Culture

The abandoned city's treasure chamber in the 1942 “Jungle Book” as a model for cinema

One of the greatest treasure houses in world cinema: the secret chamber of riches in the abandoned city from the 1942 British-American adaptation of "The Jungle Book". The treasury is shown in two scenes. In the first, Mowgli finds himself in the deserted palace of a vanished

Cinema · Observations · Mores

Isabella Rossellini on the set of “Domina” and Roman curls as a mark of status

My beloved Isabella Rossellini reports from the set of "Domina" on the story of Livia Drusilla, together with the director Claire McCarthy. In the photograph her coiffure does not much resemble a wasps' nest, the shape of which was extremely popular among her heroine's contemporaries,

Faith · Art · Observations

But in general, looking at the Neapolitan bone multi-figure stele of the casting out of Lucifer, it is hard not to recall the equally populous works of the contemporary British artists, the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, who likewise use motifs…

Faith · Art · Madrid · Museums

Naples had an excellent school of carving not only in stone, but also in bone

Naples had an excellent school of carving not only in stone, but also in bone. And if the famous sculpture in the Sansevero Chapel showed a man struggling free from the net of vice, then the treasury of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain holds, for example, a 40-centimetre

A vessel of dark nut shell in gilded mounts, with a horn on top and a handle, on a white plinth in a museum display case.

NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · New York

Vessel of Seychelles nut shell in gold mounts by Viennese masters of the 16th century at the Metropolitan Museum

Do you remember the cups of precious metals and exotic shells in the Kremlin Armoury? Well, the Metropolitan Museum holds a vessel made of a gold-mounted nut shell from the Seychelles, fashioned in the sixteenth century by Viennese craftsmen

NB! · Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Paris · Pop Culture

Speaking of costly jewels, this pearl parure of Marie Antoinette was inherited by her daughter, Marie-Thérèse, the last Dauphine of France and Duchess of Angoulême

Speaking of costly jewels, this pearl parure of Marie Antoinette was inherited by her daughter, Marie-Thérèse, the last Dauphine of France, Duchess of Angoulême. The enormous pearl pendant from this set was recently sold for £27,881,497

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Alexandr Radayev