Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · People

Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Joseph Kreutzinger and the Children of Maria Theresa

Marie Antoinette in hunting dress. The portrait by Joseph Kreutzinger of 1771 was one of the favourites of Marie Antoinette's mother, Empress Maria Theresa, although she disliked her daughter's habit of hunting on horseback. Maria Theresa, herself a legendary woman of European history, had 16 children.

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Education · People

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford. How quickly other people's princesses grow up

NB! · People · Pop Culture · Humour

The French freak-singer Philippe Katerine as a drunken Silenus, or perhaps the embodiment of the allegory of alchemical mercury, which refers to Mercury and personifies both the passage from the higher to the lower and androgyny?

Faith · Observations · Society · Paris

The Olympic flame and ancient cults in the post author's reading of Games rituals

In essence, the Olympic Games are in fact a ritual. And by no means a Christian one. Only now, however, does the mystical, dark side of the rites attached to the "Games" become plainly visible. The Olympic flame is a tribute to Prometheus, who stole fire from the

Black-and-white photograph of a man in a dark suit and tie beside a white-framed window, holding a pair of glasses.

Books · Mores · Humour

Evelyn Waugh on the French as an inventive people who chose the path of evil

“The French are an ingenious and perspicacious people, who have deliberately chosen the path of evil. This shows itself in everything they have done over the centuries.” Evelyn Waugh

NB! · Observations

That Was Too Much

NB! · Society · Paris

The Opening of the Olympics

The opening of the Olympics. The sky over Paris

NB! · Observations · Humour

Out to See Macron's Triumph

NB! · Observations · Paris · Pop Culture · Humour

Has anyone worked out whether those African women on the bridge at the Olympic opening ceremony are an allusion to gargoyles, or just a number in the wailing-Kevin style?

NB! · Education

An Olympiad Task

NB! · Geography · Nature

Sørvágsvatn: the lake above the ocean on Vágar, one of the Faroe Islands

Geography · Art · Books · Museums · Nature

Andrey Bely’s poem “On the Mountains” about a hunchback and pineapples on a cliff

Mountains in bridal wreaths. I am in raptures and young. On my mountain-tops there is a purifying cold. Here, up to my crag, a white-haired hunchback has dragged himself. He has brought me as a gift pineapples from the subterranean hothouses. He danced in crimson-bright, glorifying the

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