Art · Observations · Society

Medusa Gorgon, whom we remember as a terrifying monster with snakes for hair, a lolling tongue, scales, claws and a hideous visage, turning to stone all who meet her gaze, and asleep, beheaded by the valiant Perseus…

A sexist reception of the heritage of world culture leaves outside the brackets of memory the story of how Medusa was turned into a monster: the beauty, raped by Poseidon, found neither help nor consolation in the temple of Athena, protectress of justice, but received instead a curse from the

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Books · Museums

A medieval portable bookcase in the form of a chest on a pole, from Hereford Cathedral, the very one that houses the famous chained library

A chain of red-orange coral links with a carved cross, lying in a museum display case.

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums

Coral chain of the Order of the Holy Spirit that belonged to Louis XVI

The collar of the highest French order, that of the Holy Spirit, made of coral and belonging to Louis XVI. The other members of the order had to make do with something plainer: gold and enamel

Archaeology · Art · Heritage · Rome

The she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus on the back of the Ostia altar

The back of the Ostia altar gave it a second name and a second life: it shows the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, which is why the monument is also called the altar of the twins. This subject, too, is bound up with the name of Mars, who, according

NB! · Archaeology · Faith · Art · Museums · Rome

In the month named after Mars, let us remember the god of war and the patron god of the Eternal City

In the month named after Mars, let us remember the god of war and the patron god of the Eternal City. The front face of the altar from the Ostian portico of AD 124, with its bas-relief of Mars, Venus and a goose, has survived rather badly, having probably

NB! · Art · Nature

Wenzel Jamnitzer's Daphne stands on the earth, at once showing her kinship with nature and paying tribute to the earthly metamorphoses that people turn into art

Wenzel Jamnitzer's Daphne stands on the earth, at once showing her kinship with nature and paying tribute to the earthly metamorphoses that people turn into art. A most interesting find: the clods of earth are made of uncut quartz crystals and are almost indistinguishable from the real substrate.

Art · Museums · Paris

Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Statuette of Daphne at the Château d’Écouen and the Image of Rebirth

The brilliant Wenzel Jamnitzer managed to discern not the gloomy side of Daphne's story, and his remarkable sculpture shows less the suicide of a despairing girl than a rebirth, a passage into another form of life, free of sin and suffering. This is one of two statuettes of

Art · Humour

Wenzel Jamnitzer, a 16th-century German goldsmith, and his work on the myth of Daphne

It may look like the work of a contemporary artist, but this is the creation of the sixteenth-century German goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer, inspired by the myth of Daphne, a servant of Diana, who begged the gods to turn her into a laurel tree. Daphne had taken a vow of

Aristocracy · Archive · Moscow · Mores

With the death of Count Nikolay Petrovich Sheremetev, Dmitry Nikolayevich was left a complete orphan: the seven-year-old son of the former serf actress Praskovya Kovalyova-Zhemchugova, who had died soon after his birth

The boy's upbringing was taken in hand by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, while as guardians of the young Sheremetev's person and of his fortune she appointed the State Secretary Dmitry Petrovich Troshchinsky and the Privy Councillor and Senator Mikhail Ivanovich Danaurov, whose family settled at

NB! · Faith · Museums · Heritage · People

The terrifying mask of the Scottish prophet lay hidden for hundreds of years, kept in secret by the Peden family as the most precious relic of their famous forebear, and was shown to the public only in 1840

The terrifying mask of the Scottish prophet lay hidden for hundreds of years, kept in secret by the Peden family as the most precious relic of their famous forebear, and was shown to the public only in 1840. It is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland

Faith · Museums · Observations · Humour

A unique artefact, of course, and the most astonishing thing is that for its own time this mask of an eminent preacher of the Covenanter movement was a far more ordinary phenomenon than it is for us

A unique artefact, of course, and the most astonishing thing is that for its own time this mask of an eminent preacher of the Covenanter movement was a far more ordinary phenomenon than it is for us. Alexander Peden wore this mask not as some manifesto but, as historians write,

Faith · Museums · Society · People

Mask of preacher Alexander Peden made of hair, skin and teeth, and his opposition to Charles II

The mask of Alexander Peden, the seventeenth-century Scottish preacher, is made of human hair, animal skin and even human teeth! Today this wandering prophet would be called an oppositionist. He spoke out sharply against the Crown and every decision of Charles II, for which he was declared an outlaw

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