Aristocracy - The Parnassian (Page 35)

Aristocracy · Architecture · Heritage · Mores

The Khmelita estate after the 1950s fire and its restoration by Viktor Kulakov

An eighteenth-century manor survived Napoleon's invasion, revolution, nationalisation, collectivisation and the Great Patriotic War, but did not survive a drunken peasant. In the 1950s it was burnt down by hard-drinking collective farmers who decided to warm themselves on a cold night within the walls of the

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Before you are two remarkably similar portraits

Before you are two remarkably similar portraits. The one in colour shows Charles II, King of England; the second, the English aristocrat and politician Charles Boyle. Evidently, Boyle commissioned an exact copy of the king's portrait, with his own head fitted on to it. The clothes, the pose,

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Here is a muscleman: Henry of Navarre as Hercules, victor over the Lernaean Hydra

Here is a muscleman: Henry of Navarre as Hercules, victor over the Lernaean Hydra. The portrait clearly flatters the figure of the founder of the Bourbon dynasty, but it recalls the comical genealogy of the House of Navarre, traced from a son of Hercules

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A charming Gothic-style chair from the study of the Comtesse d'Osmond

A charming Gothic-style chair from the study of the Comtesse d'Osmond. The work of Jacob Dismalter, a reproduction of around 1820. Terribly cool unicorns.

Aristocracy · Observations · Ethnography · Humour

Head of the Miklukho-Maklai Foundation descends from the traveller's brothers, not from him

Saw a rather diverting advertisement for coconut condensed milk at an acquaintance's, the proceeds of which will support an expedition to the shores of Papua New Guinea. FURTHER IN THE TEXT: "organised by the descendants of the great Russian traveller Nikolay Miklukho-Maklay". The Miklukho-Maklay

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If the child of Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen marries the child of Jaime and Cersei Lannister, the result will be Charles II of Habsburg

In the painting, two servants butt heads on a city street between two carriages, with their masters leaning out and a man in black standing between.

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Claude Gillot’s “The Two Carriages” of 1707 and a quarrel between servants before their carriages

Problems of the aristocracy: how to settle relations between the servants? Claude Gillot, The Two Carriages, 1707. And do not be alarmed: the woman with the reptilian face is in fact merely wearing a velvet mask known as a “moretta”.

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The portraits of Napoleon's younger sister, Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, recall today's Instagram divas: the same expression and the same angle everywhere, only the frocks and parures change

Aristocracy · Architecture · The East · Observations · Humour

The Mukhranbatoni House in Tbilisi, completed in 1899, and the legend of Pushkin's parquet

The Tbilisi house of the Mukhranbatoni on Loris-Melikov Street, renamed Gudiashvili Street, is now partly residential. It was built to the commission of Prince Ivan Bagration-Mukhransky in the style of the French Renaissance, to a design by Kornely Tatishchev, a celebrated architect of his day. When I visited

Aristocracy · Architecture · The East · Observations

The Bagration-Mukhransky princes' house in Tbilisi and the aristocratic club on Golovinsky Prospect

I once told of the house of the Princes Bagration-Mukhransky in Tbilisi, which stood not far from the aristocratic club, also owned by the Mukhranbatoni, on Golovinsky Prospect, now Rustaveli Avenue. I have long been meaning to tell one story that connects me with this building

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Someone here has said I do not look much like Sandro, but Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, standing between Maria Georgievna with Olga Alexandrovna and Xenia Alexandrovna with Mikhail Alexandrovich, does look quite like him?

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Charles II's glass sundial at Whitehall and its destruction by the Earl of Rochester

In a book on Whitehall, one of the loveliest palaces in Europe and, in its day, the largest in the world, I came upon a description of a whimsical toy belonging to the merry King Charles II. In the centre of the Privy Garden at Whitehall stood a unique sundial.