What do a seventeenth-century illustration from a book on executions and the emblem of Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service have in common? The depiction of fasces: since antiquity, bundles of rods with an axe or hatchet have been a symbol of authority, including the power to execute and to pardon.
In the Trans-Volga forests on the river Kerzhenets, not far from Semyonov in the Nizhny Novgorod region, stands a cross over the grave of Hieromonk Sophonty, one of the most revered fathers of the Old Believers. Tradition names Sophonty as one of seven Solovetsky monks who fled the monastery
A mural in Tomsk showing Saint Theodore of Tomsk, also known as the elder Fyodor Kuzmich, and Emperor Alexander I, whom many consider to be one and the same person. I am inclined to think so too. The man who called himself Fyodor Kuzmich appeared in 1836 in Perm Governorate,
The Surbarán exhibition at the Louvre opens with the "Crucifixion" that launched the painter's fame in Seville in 1627. The Dominicans of the monastery of San Pablo el Real commissioned 21 paintings from the young Surbarán, and this vast canvas, almost three metres high, became the
Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman for Maryland, has introduced in the US House of Representatives a bill that would oblige the Smithsonian Institution to create a permanent exhibition on the propaganda of Donald Trump. The bill is entitled the "Preserving and Remembering the History of Trump and Other Tyrants