NB! · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

Breaking into the Slytherin Common Room

A nude curly-haired infant sleeps on yellow drapery against a blue sky. The painting sits in an ornate gilded frame on a carved wooden console table with female figures.

NB!

Painting of a sleeping infant in a carved gilded frame on a console

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

If you rest, then like Guido Reni's Sleeping Putto, 1627-1628

NB! · Monarchies · People · Humour

George VI in a Kimono

NB! · Faith · London · Monarchies · Society

As Buckingham Palace makes perfectly clear, King Charles III is alive and well enough to read the Bible for a church service he was unable to attend in person

Aristocracy · Archive · Mores · People · Rome

The duels of Benito Mussolini, including the fights with Chiccotti and Count Calvi

Benito Mussolini Fencing with Swords, Rome, 23 November 1936. In all likelihood, the photograph captures a jocular, exhibition duel, attended by a great many spectators, journalists and even cameras. But Mussolini really was a duellist: at least five of his duels are known, beginning in 1915. It is generally held,

Engraving dated 1514 with the monogram AD: a man and a woman dance, the man behind the woman with one arm flung up.

NB! · Art

Albrecht Dürer depicts a dancing couple in an engraving of 1514

Two Dance. Albrecht Dürer, 1514

NB! · Museums · Observations · Paris · Humour

Much in the world changes, but not the queues at the Louvre

Black-and-white photo of a young woman in a tiara with long dark hair, earrings and rings, resting her hands on a stone bust of an Egyptian pharaoh.

Cinema · People · Pop Culture

Loren, aged 19, played Cleopatra in the 1953 film “Two Nights with Cleopatra”

Sophia Loren as Cleopatra. Yes, Loren did play Cleopatra, in the witty and naive 1953 film Two Nights with Cleopatra. In the photographs the actress is 19

NB! · Archive · In the Press

Italian Front Pages on Russia

Three oval paintings in gilded frames on a wood-paneled wall. In the centre, a nude young man with a bow, a centaur and a small child stand before a colonnaded hall.

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Oval paintings in carved frames: a mythological scene with a centaur

NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Art · Monarchies

Palazzo Vecchio, the apartments of Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany, Florence

Palazzo Vecchio, the apartments of Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany, Florence. Allegory of fire in the ceiling paintings and the instruction of the centaur Chiron by Apollo, god of Light

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