Contemporaries described Most Serene Prince Konstantin Gorchakov as a very attractive man

Contemporaries described Most Serene Prince Konstantin Gorchakov as a very attractive man. Count Witte, for example, remembered Gorchakov as "remarkably handsome" and as someone who "until very recently drew attention by his appearance." This is not easy to grasp from the surviving photograph of an elegant, yet nonetheless spare and grey-haired old man at the famous Romanov costume ball, where Gorchakov was already 63. Still, if one looks at the portraits of his eldest son, the 29-year-old Alexander Konstantinovich, painted by Bogdanov-Belsky, all the raptures about the bearing and beauty of the Gorchakovs become comprehensible.

Report a translation error

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

Contemporaries described Most Serene Prince Konstantin Gorchakov as a very attractive man

Read more

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