The poet Apollon Maykov prevents the painter Nikolai Kuznetsov from cutting off the head of the writer Ieronim Yasinsky, while the Symbolist Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in chains, contemplates the proceedings with detachment

The poet Apollon Maykov prevents the painter Nikolai Kuznetsov from cutting off the head of the writer Ieronim Yasinsky, while the Symbolist Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in chains, contemplates the proceedings with detachment. 1888, Ilya Repin.

This is just what Repin's painting "St Nicholas of Myra Saves Three Innocents from Death" might have been called, had its characters borne the names of the people from whom their features were copied.

The painting was bought by Alexander III, and this acquisition is usually linked to the emperor's conceiving the idea of founding the Russian Museum, in whose collection the picture now hangs.

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

The poet Apollon Maykov prevents the painter Nikolai Kuznetsov from cutting off the head of the writer Ieronim Yasinsky, while the Symbolist Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in chains, contemplates the proceedings with detachment

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s