Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Observations · Mores
That very wedding banquet of Joseph and Isabella, open to the widest public, was held in the Hofburg, the winter palace of the Austrian Habsburgs. At the centre of a table that looks modest beside the expanse of the colossal hall sat the imperial couple, Francis I Stephen and Maria
Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Mores
Most of the festivities in honour of the wedding of Archduke Joseph and Infanta Isabella of Parma, naturally, took place in Vienna. One of Van Meytens's paintings captures the entry into the city of a ceremonial procession of 90 carriages. However, in those years Vienna had no square
Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Mores
When the heir of the Austrian Habsburgs, Archduke Joseph, married the Spanish Infanta Isabella of the Italian cadet branch of the French Bourbons, his formidable mother, Empress Maria Theresa, commissioned a series of paintings, a sort of reportage from the magnificent wedding festivities, from the court painter Martin van Meytens.
Aristocracy · Cinema · Monarchies · Mores · People
The role of Queen Fabiola on screen could quite well have been played by Dame Angela Lansbury, who, incidentally, is three years older than Fabiola and is alive and well even now, at 95. As for how Fabiola and Baudouin met, there are three most popular versions of their encounter.
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · People
Sweet Fabiola was, perhaps, the most colourful member of the Belgian royal family. And this had nothing to do with her formal status: from her youth, when she was not yet especially titled, despite her closeness to the court of Alfonso XIII, the Spanish aristocrat Fabiola de Mora y Aragón
Aristocracy · Monarchies
Three Queens of Belgium: Queen Fabiola, Queen Paola and Queen Mathilde. From 2013 to 2014 Belgium was a unique monarchy with three living queens. Fabiola, the childless widow of King Baudouin, bore the title of Queen of the Belgians after the accession of her brother-in-law Albert II, while
Aristocracy · Monarchies
In the twentieth century the royal house of the Netherlands established a curious and honourable tradition: several generations of monarchs abdicated without waiting for the infirmities of old age, and handed the crown to the young. Queen Wilhelmina (1880-1962), the only daughter of Willem III to outlive him, reigned
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Humour
When a woman you have never met gets a court to make your father adopt her, and then comes to tea. This photograph captures, quite literally, the first meeting of King Philippe of Belgium with his sister, Princess Delphine of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the illegitimate daughter of King Albert II
Aristocracy · Archive · Moscow · Museums
A unique piece from the furnishings of the Ostankino Palace, commissioned by Count Nikolay Petrovich Sheremetev in 1794: a gilded incense burner of copper, brass, marble and wood from the workshop of Paul Spoll. The advertising description in the newspapers of the late 18th century sets out at length the
Aristocracy · Archive · Art · Moscow · Mores
In the eighteenth century Russian aristocrats took to a new fashion: adopting orphans from the poorest classes. Many families took into their homes the children of non-Russian peoples and brought them up as their own. Pyotr Borisovich and Varvara Alexeyevna Sheremetev raised two Kalmyk girls, the cousins Annushka and
Aristocracy · Archive · Art · Moscow · Museums
The Museum of the Defence of Moscow holds a Group Portrait of the Descendants of A.S. Pushkin Who Took Part in the Great Patriotic War, 1957, by the retired lieutenant colonel Vladimir Pereyaslavets. Not all of Pushkin's descendants who served in the war are gathered in the
Aristocracy · Art · Books · Observations
The most interesting thing about this child's portrait, in my view, is that the child is reading a primer, and he is three years old. The count's son Ivan Alexeyevich Musin-Pushkin was painted by an unknown artist of the Yaroslavl school around 1786. The boy&