"Nature endowed him with a body remarkable for its slenderness and bearing, and fully matching the nobility of his spirit…

"Nature endowed him with a body remarkable for its slenderness and bearing, and fully matching the nobility of his spirit… He had an expressive face, flashing eyes, a nose of noble shape,… a rather long neck, a very broad chest, a taut belly, muscular thighs, strong and shapely shins. But you would have said that you had never seen anything more elegant than his fingers. His speech was so sweet and witty that nothing grieved his listeners more than its ending."

So Joachim Camerarius describes Dürer.

What Dürer looked like may be learned from more than fifty of his self-portraits. This one, known as the "Portrait of the Artist with a Thistle", Dürer painted when he had just turned 22.

It is rarely to be seen; at present it is on display in the Louvre, in the Richelieu wing.

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of 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

"Nature endowed him with a body remarkable for its slenderness and bearing, and fully matching the nobility of his spirit…

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

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