Ah, the eighteenth century: one would sit there thinking, why not pose completely undressed for a talented monkey! Oh là là!
Painting by Jean-Baptiste Henri Deshays
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
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
I have been seized by an unbounded respect for this Kurdish warrior with his cat, in a photograph of 1870
Until 1932 Tashkent had a church of Saint Sergius of Radonezh. It was built at the state's expense on the initiative of the Governor-General of Turkestan, Baron Alexandr Vrevsky, and the construction cost 90,000 roubles. The church stood on Pushkinskaya Street, at the junction with Assakinskaya.