NB! · Faith · The East · Art

The Virgin Mary in the Japanese Pictorial Tradition

Close-up of the Moon with coloured surface tones and craters, with Saturn and its rings visible above the limb against the dark sky.

NB! · Geography · Science · Nature

Andrew McCarty photographed Saturn being occulted by the Moon from a Hawaiian volcano

Saturn emerging from behind the Moon. The American astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy climbed to the summit of a volcano in Hawaii to photograph Saturn being briefly covered by the Moon. The Mauna Kea Observatory, where the picture was taken, stands on the volcano at an altitude of between 3,700 and

Books · Saint Petersburg · Humour

Böll tells of Dostoevsky's grandson, a Leningrad engineer

Böll tells of Dostoevsky's grandson, a Leningrad engineer. Having retired, he became a tireless, meticulous researcher and biographer of his grandfather. He made us count the steps from "Raskolnikov's house" to "the pawnbroker's house", and showed us the door behind

Detail of a painted still life: a snail with a yellow striped shell crawls across a reddish-brown ledge beside a cluster of pale green blossoms and leaves, with water drops on the stone.

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Snail and viburnum blossoms on a stone ledge, detail of a still life

Still life of a bouquet of roses, a carnation and morning glories in a glass vase in a niche, with a snail on the stone ledge and a butterfly above.

Art · Observations

Floral still life with roses in a glass vase, a snail and a butterfly

A painting by the seventeenth-century Flemish artist Nicolaes van Verendael, sold yesterday at auction for 260,000 Swiss francs. Just look at the detail! Such masterpieces are not to be found among modern painters

NB! · In the Press · Observations · Society

My new column on cultural codes appears in the September issue of RBC Style

Tall atrium with a glass roof and white steel framework. A twisting mirrored sculpture on the left, a staircase on the right, and a screen showing clouds at the back.

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GES-2 interior: glass roof, white steel trusses and a mirrored sculpture

A tall, bright hall with a glass roof and galleries. A tilted mirrored sculpture of metal slats stands inside, a screen with a cloud hangs behind it, and a few visitors are below.

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Glass-roofed atrium with a tilted metal sculpture

NB! · Archive · In the Press · Art · People

In 1960 Life Magazine Ran Reproductions of Anatoly Zverev and a Piece by Alexander Marshack, “The Art of Russia That Nobody Has Seen”

Archaeology · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris

After the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, France's National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) was permitted to carry out excavations on an unprecedented scale

After the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, France's National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) was permitted to carry out excavations on an unprecedented scale. The discoveries made in the course of the dig will undoubtedly expand considerably our knowledge of Notre-Dame de Paris and

NB! · Coming Up · Cinema · Books

At the presentation of the new season of the online cinema Kinopoisk, it was announced that work is under way on a series based on War and Peace by the director Sergey Ursulyak

Table in three sections: work tasks (from concept to preparing a text for a publisher), required skills, and required knowledge of literature, history and folklore.

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