Faith · Art · Nature

One of the most remarkable facts is that paintings of Tobias and the Angel include a dog

One of the most remarkable facts is that paintings of Tobias and the Angel include a dog. And how, indeed, could one do without it? Tobias sets off on a perilous journey, taking with him a single companion, whom he had not known before, and a faithful friend, the dog

Faith · Art · Museums

Tobias and the Archangel Raphael in Filippino Lippi's Painting and in Fifteenth-Century Florence

Tobias and the Angel, Filippino Lippi, 1475-80, Florence. The walk of Tobias with the Archangel Raphael is the central subject of the Old Testament Book of Tobit. The youth and the Angel go hand in hand, their fair heads inclined towards each other, while a slightly unsteady pose betrays

Archive · The East · Art · Saint Petersburg

Japanese sailors of the Wakamiya-maru in Russia and their return with the embassy of 1805

The Bronze Horseman as Seen by Japanese Sailors Who Found Themselves in Russia in 1794. The illustration is found in the 11th scroll of the Japanese manuscript "Kankai ibun", or "Strange Tidings of the Seas Surrounding [the Earth]", compiled from the interrogations of sailors who were

NB! · London · Pop Culture · Humour

A Christmas Tree of Pointe Shoes at the London Coliseum

Screenshot of a The i Paper article with a photograph of an astronaut in a spacesuit on the lunar surface.

NB! · Science · Society · Humour

Half of Britons would not fly to the Moon for free, seeing no point in the trip

Half of Britons would turn down a free trip to the Moon, fearing that “there is not much to see” or that it would “take too long”. People complained that there is nothing to do and nothing to look at on the Moon, and that flying there “makes no sense”

Old photograph of a bedroom with a canopied bed, a crystal chandelier, an arched mirror and a round table in a hall with a painted ceiling.

Archive · Architecture · Monarchies · Heritage

The bedroom of the French kings' castle before the 1919 fire and after its restoration

The Emperor's Bedchamber at the Château de Compiègne. The château remained a residence of the French kings until Napoleon III. The old photograph shows the original appearance of the bedchamber as Napoleon found it. In 1919 it burned down and was restored to the form shown in the

NB! · Archive · Mores · Humour

Since 1891 the Snow Woman has somewhat lost her elegance

Autumn mountain landscape with a river in the valley, bare trees and herdsmen driving cattle down a slope under dark clouds.

Art · Museums

Pieter Bruegel's “The Return of the Herd” of 1565 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna collection

The Return of the Herd. Autumn. Pieter Bruegel, 1565. Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Archive · Books · Mores · People

Pushkin’s poem “The Death of Lucullus” and Uvarov’s designs on Sheremetev’s inheritance

Sergey Semyonovich Uvarov, who published works on archaeology and ancient Greek literature and rose to be President of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, was an exceedingly contradictory man. Who expects a scholar and thinker to be capable of foul deeds, spite, thieving and petty pilfering? Yet Solovyov recalls that there

NB! · Faith · Observations · Society

At Least We Have Football Fans to Thank for the Reminder That Europe Is Still Christian

NB! · The East · Art · Monarchies · Observations · Humour

I dream of a hat like the one worn by Ivan Palaiologos in the fresco in the Medici Palace

NB! · Science · Pop Culture · Nature

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