Art · Madrid · Museums · Society · Nature

The Prado Museum and WWF show the effects of climate change in paintings by Velázquez and Goya

The Prado Museum and WWF have illustrated the consequences of climate change with great paintings from the museum's collection. Diego Velázquez's Philip IV is drowning, horse and all; Joachim Patinir's crossing to the underworld has run dry; Joaquín Sorolla's Children on the

Detail of a painting: a pale, nude woman with auburn hair and a tear on her cheek, while a yellowish figure of Death with a skull for a face presses its mouth to hers.

Art · Mores · Humour

Hans Baldung's painting “Woman and Death”

There is nothing so terrible in such a difference in age. Hans Baldung, Woman and Death

Art · Cinema · Pop Culture

The abandoned city's treasure chamber in the 1942 “Jungle Book” as a model for cinema

One of the greatest treasure houses in world cinema: the secret chamber of riches in the abandoned city from the 1942 British-American adaptation of "The Jungle Book". The treasury is shown in two scenes. In the first, Mowgli finds himself in the deserted palace of a vanished

Cinema · Observations · Mores

Isabella Rossellini on the set of “Domina” and Roman curls as a mark of status

My beloved Isabella Rossellini reports from the set of "Domina" on the story of Livia Drusilla, together with the director Claire McCarthy. In the photograph her coiffure does not much resemble a wasps' nest, the shape of which was extremely popular among her heroine's contemporaries,

Faith · Art · Observations

But in general, looking at the Neapolitan bone multi-figure stele of the casting out of Lucifer, it is hard not to recall the equally populous works of the contemporary British artists, the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, who likewise use motifs…

Faith · Art · Madrid · Museums

Naples had an excellent school of carving not only in stone, but also in bone

Naples had an excellent school of carving not only in stone, but also in bone. And if the famous sculpture in the Sansevero Chapel showed a man struggling free from the net of vice, then the treasury of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain holds, for example, a 40-centimetre

A vessel of dark nut shell in gilded mounts, with a horn on top and a handle, on a white plinth in a museum display case.

NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · New York

Vessel of Seychelles nut shell in gold mounts by Viennese masters of the 16th century at the Metropolitan Museum

Do you remember the cups of precious metals and exotic shells in the Kremlin Armoury? Well, the Metropolitan Museum holds a vessel made of a gold-mounted nut shell from the Seychelles, fashioned in the sixteenth century by Viennese craftsmen

NB! · Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Paris · Pop Culture

Speaking of costly jewels, this pearl parure of Marie Antoinette was inherited by her daughter, Marie-Thérèse, the last Dauphine of France and Duchess of Angoulême

Speaking of costly jewels, this pearl parure of Marie Antoinette was inherited by her daughter, Marie-Thérèse, the last Dauphine of France, Duchess of Angoulême. The enormous pearl pendant from this set was recently sold for £27,881,497

NB!

But This Is Going Too Far

Portrait of Cymburgis of Masovia in a white headdress, eyes lowered, wearing a red dress and a gold chain around her neck.

NB! · Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies

Cymburgis of Masovia Shown Without Prognathism, Unlike Her Habsburg Descendants

Incidentally, in the surviving portraits of the Habsburgs' foremother, Cymburgis of Masovia, the protruding jaw is not shown, whereas her descendants were for the most part portrayed with the family trait quite unconcealed. Leopold I, from the seventeenth century, for one

Aristocracy · Monarchies · Science · Humour

Eduard Habsburg challenges Daily Mail article on the causes of the Habsburg jaw

The Daily Mail has published a long article on the Habsburg jaw. Scientists maintain that the dynasty owes its hereditary facial deformity to two centuries of inbreeding among Europe's royal families. The text has outraged our old friend Eduard Habsburg, one of the present-day representatives of the

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

The simplest answer to why I do not regard comparison with Oscar Wilde as a compliment

The simplest answer to why I do not regard comparison with Oscar Wilde as a compliment. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1895.

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