Faith · Art · Moscow · Observations · Humour

Symbols in a Vermeer painting and a video report on a Moscow woman who pinned a snake with a dustpan

In Vermeer's painting, the woman's gaze is turned to a scene of the Crucifixion, with John the Evangelist embodying wisdom. She holds her hand to her heart, which attests to her longing for God. She props up a terrestrial globe with her foot, which shows that

NB! · Faith · Art · Humour

Vermeer's Allegory of Faith: the serpent stands for Satan, and the stone for Jesus

Vermeer's Allegory of Faith: the serpent stands for Satan, and the stone for Jesus. It put me in mind of a Muscovite lady who pinned a snake that had crept in from the neighbours' flat under a rubbish bin and, in terror, awaited her son's

NB! · Observations · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour

Since the new American president is the theme of the evening, here are some mastodons

Since the new American president is the theme of the evening, here are some mastodons. The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, believed that mastodons still roamed America and asked the Lewis and Clark expedition to find them

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Maria Was an Open Book

Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · People

Princess Gunhild, whose eye disease was cured by Saint Wulfstan, had a younger sister: Gytha

Saxo Grammaticus reports that after Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings, Gytha of Wessex fled to Flanders, then to her uncle, King Sweyn of Denmark, and a few years later married Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Smolensk. Gytha bore six sons: Mstislav the Great (Prince of Kyiv), Izyaslav

Faith · Monarchies · People

Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, who kept his bishopric after the Norman Conquest of England

Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, having once sworn never to eat meat, kept that vow for the rest of his life. History remembers him as the only bishop who kept his see after the Norman Conquest of England. Church historians explain this by the pastor's immense authority among the

A torn parchment leaf with Latin and Old English text, mended with strips, with a red initial B, mounted on an album page.

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Feast of Saint Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, on 19 January, and his entry in an 11th-century cartulary

19 January is the feast day of the patron of all vegetarians and dieters, Saint Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. An entry on Wulfstan in one of the cartularies of the eleventh-century manuscript of Worcester Priory

NB! · Faith · The East · Pop Culture · Ethnography

The image of the demon Pazuzu (or simply Zu) from ancient Assyria and Babylon is also in active use in modern culture

NB! · Archaeology · Observations · Ethnography

One would rather that, instead of the hackneyed cliché about the tip of the iceberg, people spoke of the figures of Easter Island, most of whose bodies lie hidden beneath the earth

NB! · Monarchies · Museums · Paris · People

The Dress in Which Marie Antoinette Was Executed

NB! · Art · Monarchies · People

Today's Birthday Boy: Valentin Serov

Today's birthday boy is Valentin Serov. Here is his lithograph "The Coronation of Nicholas II" from the "Coronation Album"

Archive · Books · Paris · People

Ten years ago Christie's sold Sanson's letter addressed to Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, editor of the "Annales patriotiques", in which he tells the truth about the death of "Citizen Louis Capet" in order to put a stop to conjecture and false claims about how…

Charles-Henri Sanson kept diaries, though it is not known whether they formed the basis of the volumes published in the 1860s. There are grounds for thinking that these may have been a free interpretation of history in another's hand, and that Sanson's grandson may have

Alexandr Radayev