NB! · Faith · Paris · Reportage
Alexandr Radayev
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Observations · Humour
Marie Leszczyńska, Queen of France, in a frightfully fine outfit with fur trim, a muff, a tippet and a plunging neckline
Marie Leszczyńska, Queen of France, in a frightfully fine outfit with fur trim, a muff, a tippet and a plunging neckline. The eighteenth century, but with our weather it would be just the thing today. And likewise in a sleigh, on some granite or other
Architecture · Art · Books · Monarchies · Paris
Napoleon's plaster model of a bronze elephant at the Bastille site stood until 1846
Napoleon wished to raise a dazzling monument to his victories: a bronze elephant twenty-four metres high, cast from melted-down cannon, was to adorn the square on the site of the demolished Bastille. The elephant, on a lofty pedestal, stood in the middle of a fountain, and the creature&
NB! · Architecture · Paris · Humour
This is how the elephant was meant to look, according to Jacques Cellerier and Jean Alavoine: with a conservatory in its bottom
Architecture · Books · Paris
Victor Hugo describes the decaying elephant monument at the Place de la Bastille in “Les Misérables”
Foreigners rarely inspected this structure, and passers-by did not look at it at all. The Elephant was crumbling with every year; fallen chunks of plaster left hideous sores on its flanks. The "aediles", as the elegant argot of the salons puts it, had forgotten it since 1814.
NB! · Architecture · Monarchies · Paris
A Monument to Napoleon's Military Genius in the Fountain on the Place de la Bastille
Faith · Observations · Ethnography
How oracles received answers from the gods and how the Delphic Oracle worked
Oracle means an answer. Oracles foretold the future, while priests and soothsayers watched the course of the ceremonies and sacrifices, paying attention to the appearance and strength of the sacrificial fire and to the shape and colour of the entrails of the victim: from these it could be told whether
Archaeology · Faith · Monarchies
Some scholars believe that the chryselephantine Apollo of the 6th century BC was part of the ex-voto of Croesus, King of Lydia, to the Delphic oracle
Some scholars believe that the chryselephantine Apollo of the 6th century BC was part of the ex-voto of Croesus, King of Lydia, to the Delphic oracle. An ex-voto is an offering to a deity or a priest in gratitude or in fulfilment of a vow. Votive objects have
NB! · Art · Museums
At first glance one might think that Apollo's skin is made of bronze or some other metal, but it is simply aged bone
NB! · Archaeology · Art · Heritage
Chryselephantine sculpture: from chrysos (gold) and elephantinos (ivory)
Chryselephantine sculpture: from chrysos (gold) and elephantinos (ivory). Statues with a wooden frame were covered in ivory and clothed in gold. Only fragments of these beautiful statues have survived to this day
NB! · Art · Humour
Head of a sculpture of Apollo with golden hair and inset eyes
The morning after a legendary party. Apollo
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Faith · Rome