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Madrid · Observations · Mores · Reportage
Almond soup at the Lhardy restaurant and its cuisine rated five out of ten
Trying ajoblanco, the Spanish cold soup of raw almonds, in the Madrid restaurant of Agustín Lardy, named after a Spanish painter of the nineteenth century. Almond soup is, in essence, the same thing as satsivi. At the bottom of the plate sit a little fish and a little salad, and
Aristocracy · Madrid · Monarchies · Museums
Grand Master's Mantle of the Order of Charles III, Owned by King Ferdinand VII, in the Royal Collection in Madrid
Mantle of the Grand Master of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Charles III. This is the second most important order in Spain after the Order of the Golden Fleece. The mantle belonged to King Ferdinand VIl. It is made of light blue silk in honour of the Virgin
Art · Books · Madrid · Museums
The mind is its own place
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. John Milton Illustration: detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, 1490-1510, Prado, Madrid
Art · Madrid · Museums
Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, 1480-1490
Museo del Prado, Madrid
Archive · Paris · Pop Culture
Parisian Fashion of 1908
The lady in the foreground of the first photograph is Julie Wolfthorn (1864–1944); the woman captured in the third portrait is a German modernist artist and graphic designer
Aristocracy · Art · Cinema · Books · Museums
Pigments, inks and gold of the Book of Hours “Golden Book of the Visconti”
The Book of Hours of Gian Galeazzo Visconti: a Latin book of hours commissioned by the first Duke of Milan of the House of Visconti in the late fourteenth century. The Book of Hours, also known as the "Golden Book of Visconti", is lavishly illustrated in the manner
Archaeology · Art · Madrid · Museums
Orestes and Pylades in an Augustan sculpture, from Villa Ludovisi to the Prado
Orestes and Pylades, Castor and Pollux, Antinous and Hadrian: it is not known for certain whom the San Ildefonso Group in the Prado Museum collection actually depicts. Most often the youths are identified as Orestes and Pylades at the moment of a sacrifice in gratitude for their successful return from
Art · Books · Madrid · Museums
The philosopher Hippolyte Taine has a recollection connected with his impressions of the canvases of Velázquez in Madrid:
“One of my friends, who had returned from Madrid, told me that beside the great pictures of Velázquez that are to be found there, all the others, the most sincere, the most magnificent, seem dead or academic.” In the photograph: one of the two paintings by Velázquez in France, Saint
The East · Art · People
Sevillian painter José Villegas y Cordero and his “Andalusian Moirai”
The Andalusian Fates, José Villegas y Cordero, 1910–1913. José Villegas y Cordero (1844–1921), a Spanish painter from Seville, sold his first picture at the age of twelve and in time became one of the best-paid and most collected of Spanish artists. His early work is devoted to
Books · Mores · People · Humour
There are plenty of anecdotes about the lazy and eccentric character of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov
In his review of the 3rd edition of the translation of Krylov's fables by the British writer, translator and Slavist William Shedden-Ralston, Turgenev described an amusing episode from the life of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov: A large, heavy picture, hanging directly above the spot where Krylov usually sat,
Madrid · Monarchies · Mores · Society
Abdicated King Juan Carlos I and the scandal of his mistress Barbara Rey
On a Spanish morning news programme, the story of King Juan Carlos I and his mistress Bárbara Rey is under discussion. Let me try to recount this absorbing tale in brief. Juan Carlos I, now a king in retirement, abdicated in favour of his son in the summer of 2014.