Wenzel Jamnitzer, a 16th-century German goldsmith, and his work on the myth of Daphne

It may look like the work of a contemporary artist, but this is the creation of the sixteenth-century German goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer, inspired by the myth of Daphne, a servant of Diana, who begged the gods to turn her into a laurel tree. Daphne had taken a vow of celibacy and suffered badly from the attentions of the god Phoebus, who had fallen in love with her. Perhaps there were other ways out, but turning into a tree also proved a highly effective means of avoiding an unwelcome liaison.

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Pierre Marie Poisson’s Terracotta “Seine” in Niort, Model for a Statue on the Liner Île de France

The Bernard d'Agesci Museum in Niort holds a terracotta sculpture, "The Seine", created by Pierre Marie Poisson between 1925 and 1927. The work served as the model for the monumental statue that was later to adorn the grand salon of the famous transatlantic liner Île de

The ballet “The Flames of Paris” from its 1932 Leningrad premiere to the Bolshoi and Mikhailovsky stagings

The ballet "The Flames of Paris" was staged in Leningrad for the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The premiere took place on 7 November 1932 at the Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet, as the Mariinsky Theatre was then called. The music was written by Boris Asafyev,

Odilon Redon's Head of the Virgin after Da Vinci on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

The Da Vinci theme is unexpectedly continued by one of the most uncanny of French Symbolists, Odilon Redon, with a head of the Virgin inspired precisely by Da Vinci's unfinished painting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (3 photos). I photographed the Redon at the opening of

Drawing in brown tones of a young woman's bowed head, with downcast eyes and loose, wavy hair.

Leonardo da Vinci, “La Scapigliata”, Head of a Young Woman, around 1508

Head of a young woman, known as La Scapigliata. Leonardo da Vinci. Circa 1508. The work embodies the chief principle of the master's poetics: the conveyance of the movements of the soul through outward features. This sketch demonstrates the summit of Leonardo's sfumato technique

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Pierre Marie Poisson’s Terracotta “Seine” in Niort, Model for a Statue on the Liner Île de France

The ballet “The Flames of Paris” from its 1932 Leningrad premiere to the Bolshoi and Mikhailovsky stagings

Odilon Redon's Head of the Virgin after Da Vinci on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Leonardo da Vinci, “La Scapigliata”, Head of a Young Woman, around 1508