Marble statue of a bearded Christ with a bare torso and drapery at the hips, in a dark gallery with a red-lit wall.

NB! · Faith · Art · Observations

Jacopo Fantoni’s Marble Risen Christ of 1520 with Unusual Facial Features

What unexpected features and expression the Risen Christ of Jacopo Fantoni, 1520, possesses. And he looks far older than in the traditional iconography

NB! · London · Monarchies · Mores · Humour

Camilla Parker Bowles's Favourite Biscuit

Education · People

Stanislavsky told Mikhoels that a bird's flight begins with breathing

When Stanislavsky asked Mikhoels what, in his opinion, the flight of a bird begins with, he answered: the bird first spreads its wings. Stanislavsky objected: nothing of the sort, for flight a bird needs, above all, free breathing, and so it fills its chest with air, becomes proud, and begins

Archive · Art · People

Sculptor Nemon persuaded Freud to sit for him in Vienna and London

Oscar Nemon at Work on His Sculpted Portraits of Sigmund Freud. In 1920, when Nemon was a very young sculptor and an entranced admirer of the celebrated psychologist's work, he approached Freud through one of his pupils with a request to be allowed to model him, but Freud

NB! · Cinema · People · Pop Culture

Spielberg Is Making a Miniseries About Napoleon

NB! · Observations · Nature · Humour

Brunhilda the cat wishes you a good morning and reminds you that all of life is a battle; the main thing is not to sleep through it

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Humour

Take a porcelain cup, fit it with a silver stem, and you have a goblet

Take a porcelain cup, fit it with a silver stem, and you have a goblet. So thought some craftsman of the Elizabethan age. Four hundred and some years on, this hybrid goblet of the Ming Dynasty and Elizabeth I has fetched a tidy sum

Colour plate showing a lady's bedroom in Art Nouveau style with a canopied bed, a fireplace with a mirror, a chest of drawers and a patterned carpet.

NB! · Archive · Art · Observations · Mores

French Art Nouveau lady's bedroom interior and curtains resembling Soviet ones

Looking through sketches of French Art Nouveau interiors, I came upon some curious curtains that might easily have belonged to an old Soviet interior. At any rate, I keep at home valances and throws from the early twentieth century with almost exactly the same pattern

Art · Monarchies · Museums · People

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Hunting with Hounds

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, hunting with hounds. Louis-Auguste Brun, 1783. The painting is on display on the ground floor of Versailles. It is currently being shown at the exhibition of the Rothschild collection; last year it featured in the exhibition The King's Animals.

NB! · Art · Paris · Pop Culture

In 1938 Elsa Schiaparelli presented the "Skeleton" dress, designed by Salvador Dalí

NB! · Humour

Procrustes Offers Theseus His Bed

NB! · Art · Nature

Still Life with Cherries and Strawberries

Still life with cherries and strawberries. And also with bread, wines and olives. Of living nature, the picture admits a dragonfly and a butterfly. By the Southern Netherlandish Baroque painter Osias Beert

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