NB! · Architecture · Art

Architectural Gourmandise from Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Back of an antique cello with painted decoration: a crowned female figure with a sword, a column, a crown and lilies on amber-brown wood.

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Pop Culture

Andrea Amati of Cremona's Cello for the Court of Charles IX, Mid-16th Century

The oldest cello in the world dates from the mid-sixteenth century. The maker Andrea Amati of Cremona built it as part of a set of 38 stringed instruments for the court of King Charles IX

Art · Books

A day will come when the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart's music will cease to exist, even though a few scraps of painted canvas and sheets covered with notes may remain, for the last eye and the last ear to which…

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I

NB! · Art · Humour

Marco de Angelis

Marco de Angelis. Who ordered the apple?

Aristocracy · Art · Mores

Wrought iron travel bed of the 16th century priced at about 40,000 euros

Have you ever seen an iron bed like this? A unique piece of furniture! It is made of wrought iron with openwork decoration of foliage and bouquets of flowers. This is a travelling bed, easy to dismantle and transport, which you can always take along if you set off on

NB! · Art · Moscow · People

Moscow of the Seventeenth Century, Apollinary Vasnetsov

Art

Alone

The Austrian painter Anton Marussig (1868-1925)

NB! · Art · Moscow · Observations · Humour

And what is this novelty on Kaluzhskaya Square?

And what is this novelty on Kaluzhskaya Square? Some floating fir trees beside Lenin. Interesting symbolism, something between Giuseppe Penone's sculpture in the courtyard of the Hermitage and René Morin's work with the floating orange tree in its shell in Tel Aviv, but I should not

Aerial view of children on a blue playground, casting long shadows, with an orange ball nearby.

NB! · Art · People

German photographer Katrin Korfmann and her images of people in public spaces

A photograph by Katrin Korfmann. A German photographer, Korfmann specialises in pictures of how people interact in public spaces

Oval painted portrait of Napoleon in a green coat with a white waistcoat and gold epaulettes against a dark background.

Art · Observations · People

Portrait of Napoleon by an unknown artist of the early 19th century

What a mug! For the moment, this is my favourite portrait of Napoleon. Unknown artist, early nineteenth century

NB! · Art · Museums · New York

Oedipus and the Sphinx, Gustave Moreau, Metropolitan Museum

Art · People · Pop Culture

Swimming costumes created by Sonia Delaunay in the 1920s, when the bulky bathing dresses that covered the whole body gave way to more compact, close-fitting swimsuits with bare arms and legs

Delaunay's first swimsuits were still made of knitted fabric, wool jersey, but later began to be produced in silk as well. Sonia Delaunay was a French artist, a native of the Poltava Governorate, who grew up in Odessa and Saint Petersburg and left to study in Europe at