Books · Monarchies · Society · Humour

You yourselves robbed and plundered, you yourselves set up unrighteous judges, you yourselves sold and bought yourselves in the courts

Our men of ill repute... judge themselves and pardon themselves Ivan the Terrible, in his letter to Prince Kurbsky and in his epistle to Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, 1570s

A huge wooden panel with a geometric pattern of slats in a tall atrium, with a lone person walking below.

NB! · Architecture · Art · Ethnography

Birch wood panel “Mother Earth” by Sámi artist Outi Pieski in the atrium of the government building in Oslo

The 51-metre panel "Mother Earth", made of birch wood and installed in the atrium of the new government building in Oslo. The panel's creator is the Finnish-born, renowned Sámi artist Outi Pieski

Observations · Heritage · Society · Pop Culture

The South African game Relooted, about the theft of African art from Western museums, was released a couple of weeks ago and at its peak attracted just 57 concurrent users on the leading online gaming platform

A studio with thirty full-time employees and a host of outside consulting firms worked on the game for seven years, yet it is estimated to have sold fewer than 2,000 copies. Although nobody is actually playing Relooted (in Russian, Pereukradeno), it has received wide coverage in the leading

Archive · Geography · Mores · Nature

A tame raven chick in a geologists' camp in the Arkhangelsk region in summer 1982

The Children and the Young Raven. The children found an injured young raven in the forest and nursed it back to health. It became quite tame and lived in the geologists' camp until the middle of summer. Shortly before the camp was due to move from the Arkhangelsk Region

Fresco of a bearded saint in bishop's vestments with crosses, with a halo and a book in his hand, and a Greek inscription beside him.

Faith

Andrew of Crete calls on the soul to awake in the Great Canon of Repentance

O my soul, O my soul, arise, why sleepest thou; the end is nigh, and ruin draweth near to thee. Be watchful, lest thou slumber and be weakened by sleep, lest thou lose Christ God, the Master, as Isaiah spoke in the time of night the Byzantine theologian and hymnographer

In the Press · Observations · Pop Culture

Demna Gvasalia's manifesto on his vision of the House of Gucci and an analysis of it

Good Lord, Gucci creative director Demna Gvasalia has issued a manifesto on his vision of the brand. These manifestos are always one and the same, but this time reading it leaves a particularly odd sensation. A little water and pathos to begin with: "A house that has lived many

Archive · Observations · Science

Lieutenant Yevgeny Kolbasyev and Pyotr Koshka, the First Electric Submarine in Russia

If you wish to reflect on the development of the Russian Empire towards the end of its existence, imagine that by the 1900s Russia already had a submarine of its own and, in all likelihood, more than one. In the photograph, presumably of 1901, is Russia's first electrically

Faith · Art · Heritage

Caravaggio's “Burial of Saint Lucy”, painted in 1608 during his flight from Malta, is in Syracuse, in the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia on Ortygia

The picture was painted to a local commission, at a time when the cult of the saint venerated here had suffered from the theft of her relics. In this large-format altarpiece, measuring three metres by four, the body of the beheaded martyr Lucy of Syracuse is shown in the

Aristocracy · Art · Museums · Humour

"The Swaddled Cat", attributed to Niccolò Frangipane (1555–1600), Musée d'Arts de Nantes

The composition, which recalls familiar religious subjects, is probably meant to lend an even more satirical tinge to the mockery of social conventions and of the excessive fussing over pets among the aristocracy.

Archive · Books · Museums · Ethnography

Ryazan Kosobryukhie in an 1898 Photograph and Dal and Sakharov on the Nickname

There is in the collection of the Pushkin Museum a photograph of 1898, taken in the Bogorodsky District of Moscow Governorate by Dr Alexander Zhivago, entitled "Three Peasant Women. Ryazan Slanting-Bellies". What on earth are these slanting-bellies? Saltykov-Shchedrin writes of the slanting-bellies in "

NB! · Museums · Observations · Society · Paris · Humour

Following Her Resignation, the Louvre's Disastrous Director Is Appointed to a "New Prestigious Post" Within France's G7 Presidency

Following her resignation, the Louvre's disastrous director has been appointed to a "new prestigious post" within France's G7 presidency. Personnel decide everything

Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Society · Paris

Macron announces Leribo, head of Versailles, as president of the Louvre

The worst director in the Louvre's history replaced by Christophe Leribault, formerly president of the Palace of Versailles. French President Emmanuel Macron announced the appointment of the 63-year-old Leribault at a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Leribault is an art historian who has previously worked

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