NB! · Archive · Cinema · Pop Culture

Gary Oldman as the young Dracula, 1992, photograph by Herb Ritts

NB! · Art

Andrew Wyeth, “747”, 1980

NB! · Architecture · Art · Museums · People

The House-Museum of the Artist and Inventor Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949) in Venice

Vaulted hall with a ceiling painted as interlacing branches and leaves, with two blue inscribed plaques. Fragmentary wall painting, two dark arched doorways, stone-tiled floor.

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Sala delle Asse in Sforza Castle, Milan: vault painted with tree canopy

Painted ceiling of dense foliage with a coat of arms at the centre and four blue inscribed tablets on the sides.

Art · Observations · Heritage

Preserving masterpieces and the risk posed by any intervention

Milan city council reported to have approved restoration of the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle, with its ceiling frescoes by Leonardo da Vinci, for early 2025. News of this sort always induces a certain unease. It is understood that masterpieces require upkeep, but any intervention may prove fatal

NB! · Art · Museums · Paris

Alexander Calder's mobile, or kinetic sculpture, entitled France Forever, with the Cross of Lorraine, the tricolour and the black cloud of fascism

Alexander Calder's mobile, or kinetic sculpture, entitled France Forever, with the Cross of Lorraine, the tricolour and the black cloud of fascism. The work was made in 1942 and acquired by the French Musée de l'Armée in 2020 for 6 million euros

NB! · Architecture · Art

Architectural Gourmandise from Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Archive · Monarchies · Society · People

A day after the abdication of Nicholas II, his younger brother Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich abdicated too

The document recording his abdication is known as the Act of Non-Acceptance of the Throne, since formally Mikhail did not renounce power but entrusted the fate of the monarchy to the Constituent Assembly, which the Bolsheviks later dispersed. "A heavy burden has been laid upon Me by the

NB! · Archive · New York · People · Pop Culture

George Balanchine, founder of the School of American Ballet, born Georgiy Balanchivadze, with the ballerina Suzanne Farrell at the Saratoga Race Course, and an unidentified horseman

London · Observations · Education · Society

SOAS University of London proposes replacing Aristotle and Kant with Asian and African thinkers

SOAS University of London, one of the world's leading institutions devoted to the study of Asia and Africa, has proposed to "decolonise" the philosophy curriculum in schools and universities. In place of the ancient and classical philosophy of Aristotle, Socrates, Kant and Russell, whom it has

Back of an antique cello with painted decoration: a crowned female figure with a sword, a column, a crown and lilies on amber-brown wood.

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Pop Culture

Andrea Amati of Cremona's Cello for the Court of Charles IX, Mid-16th Century

The oldest cello in the world dates from the mid-sixteenth century. The maker Andrea Amati of Cremona built it as part of a set of 38 stringed instruments for the court of King Charles IX

An elderly man in glasses, a white mitre and white vestments with an embroidered cross stands in a heavy wooden doorway. Two men in dark suits hold the door leaves.

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