Architecture · Faith · Art · Nature · Rome

A Rabbit on the Wall of the Franciscan College of St Isidore in Rome

A rabbit on the wall of the Franciscan College of St Isidore in Rome. What is the little fellow doing here, apart from nibbling his cabbage? In the Middle Ages the rabbit was associated with the Immaculate Conception. Notions of the physiology of these animals pointed to purity. It is

Shell cameo with white relief on a brown ground. Two seated draped women hold cupids on either side of a cage; a tree at left, a signature below.

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Oval cameo of two seated women and cupids beside a cage under a tree

NB! · Observations · Humour

Yesterday they were 5 each, but big ones

Yesterday they were 5 each, but big ones. And these are small, but 3 each

Art · London · Observations · Humour

London artist Jane Hoodles makes hair sculptures inspired by the Victorian era

I met an English artist who makes surreal artefacts out of hair. At first I took it for a genuine wig from some masquerade and asked her to tell me its story, so imagine my astonishment when the owner of the cake of hair said, "It's an

NB! · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

What do you make of the interior?

What do you make of the interior? To my eye, the only thing missing from the frame is Timati

Archive · Mores · Paris · People

The director Vasily Katanyan has a recollection that links Elsa Triolet, her sister Lilya Brik and Marina Tsvetaeva through Yelena, the wife of the literary scholar Tager

Soon after emigrating from Russia, Ella Yuryevna Kagan married and became Elsa Triolet, moved to Paris, and in due course began making costume jewellery out of whatever came to hand (my greetings to a good dozen of the fashionable jewellers of today), even out of Metlakh tiles, the kind used

NB! · People · Pop Culture · Saint Petersburg

Sophie Marceau and the Church of the Saviour on Blood

NB! · Archive · Rome

Rome, 1986

NB! · Art · Observations · Education · Paris · Humour

Voltaire at the École nationale des chartes, or proof that, given a set of eyelash extensions, any dried apricot can pass for a second-hand peach

Voltaire at the École nationale des chartes, or proof that, given a set of eyelash extensions, any dried apricot can pass for a second-hand peach. Though in Russia, I dare say, some criminal case or other might well be opened over such embellishment of one of the national symbols

Black-and-white still: a young man in a light shirt and dark neckerchief carries a basket of bread, with people behind him.

Art · Cinema · Museums · Rome

The painting is part of the display at the Borghese Gallery

Pier Paolo Pasolini was undoubtedly impressed by Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit when he shot these frames of Mamma Roma with the young Ettore Garofolo. The painting is on display at the Galleria Borghese

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris

Everyone who worried about Notre-Dame, look how it has almost risen from the ashes

NB! · Archive · Art · People

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