Poem by Osip Mandelstam and Mikhail Nesterov’s sketch “The Descent of Christ into Hell”

Your image, tormenting and unsteady,
I could not touch in the fog.
"Lord!" I said by mistake,
Not thinking at all of saying it.

God's name, like a great bird,
Flew out of my breast.
Ahead of me thick fog swirls,
And behind me an empty cage.

Literal translation

Osip Mandelstam

The Descent of Christ into Hell. Sketch for the icon of the iconostasis of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Saint Petersburg (Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood). Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov. Drawing, 1895

Report a translation error

The Betrothal Feast in Vlas Doroshevich's Satirical Novel “Mu-Xiang”

They were served stewed spoiled eggs, roast suckling pig, seaweed, ginger preserve, goose livers, shark-fin soup with crab roe, toasted almonds, soup with pigeon eggs, ham and chicken, boiled young bamboo, green peas, boiled chicken with bamboo shoots, bird's-nest soup with eggs and ham, fried frogs

Madonna with Cherubim in Milan's Brera: from Bellini to Mantegna

"Madonna with Cherubim" was long considered the work of Giovanni Bellini, until in 1885, during restoration, features characteristic of his chief rival, and incidentally his relative, Andrea Mantegna, came to light. What misled viewers was a softness uncharacteristic of Mantegna. Despite the established title, the Madonna and Child

Pushkin Museum refused the Ludwig collection over the branch name

The silliest thing about this renaming is its poor timing. For when the Pushkin Museum was offered, as a gift, the greatest collection of contemporary art of the second half of the twentieth century, the collection of Peter Ludwig, the very reason for the refusal was the condition that the

Poem by Osip Mandelstam and Mikhail Nesterov’s sketch “The Descent of Christ into Hell”

Read more

The Betrothal Feast in Vlas Doroshevich's Satirical Novel “Mu-Xiang”

Madonna with Cherubim in Milan's Brera: from Bellini to Mantegna

Pushkin Museum refused the Ludwig collection over the branch name

Yeeeehaw!