A long queue of visitors with white umbrellas beside the glass building of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, with a Rothko exhibition pavilion on the right.

NB! · Art · Museums · Paris · Reportage

Queue for the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, with online booking

The queue at the Fondation Louis Vuitton for the Mark Rothko exhibition. On the right, those with tickets booked online; on the left, those without

Carved relief in pale stone with a fossil coral pattern showing a nude figure wrestling a lion, held by small prongs against a grey background.

Art · Museums

Heracles and the Nemean Lion, an early 16th-century carving from the Medici collection

A Tiny Fragment of Fossil Coral with an Incredibly Beautiful Engraving. Hercules slaying the Nemean Lion, early sixteenth century, from the collection of the Medici family. Archaeological Museum of Florence

NB! · Art

“Psyche and Cupid”, or “Psyche Receiving Cupid’s First Kiss”, François Gérard, 1798

Faith · Art · Madrid · Museums · Observations · Nature

Citrons in Zurbarán's 1633 still life, on show at the Prado until 30 June

My grandmother loved "Tsitron" sweets, which had a bright lemon flavour and a pretty wrapper with lemons on it. But it never occurred to me that the citron is a fruit in its own right; I took it for just another name for the lemon. It was thanks

NB! · Architecture · Art · Paris

Statue of Joan of Arc in gilded bronze in the Place des Pyramides in Paris

In the painting, a man with a pipe examines a crown in a chest of gold while a ghostly warrior with an axe stands behind him.

Art · Observations · Heritage

Vicente Segrelles depicts a treasure finder and the ghost of the hoard's owner

The owner is, after all, not the one who found it, but the one who left it. When gazing on the treasures of antiquity, it would be as well not to forget their true proprietors. Illustration: the Spanish artist Vicente Segrelles.

Art · Science

Dürer’s engraving “Nemesis” with realistic proportions of the human body

This "Nemesis" is one of the first engravings with such realistic proportions of the human body. Dürer is believed to have worked on it with extraordinary care, using compasses and calculating instruments in order to depict the human body not as an ideal, but as it is in

NB! · Art · New York · Humour

The Future of Mankind?

The future of mankind? By the American illustrator Reid Kikuo Johnson, cover of The New Yorker, October 2017

The East · Art · Museums · Observations

A Painting by Vladimir Fyodorovich Stozharov, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Arts, at Arter, the Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art

It must be admitted that the display at the museum is rather peculiar: on the neighbouring wall, a couple of metres from Stozharov, hangs Dürer's rhinoceros, and a little further on, Bill Viola.

NB! · Faith · Art

Moses and the Burning Bush, Rembrandt, c. 1655

The East · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Mores

Tortoise trainer at the Ottoman sultan's court and the painting by Osman Hamdi Bey

The tortoise trainer. Strange as it may seem, such a post really did exist at the court of the Ottoman Sultan. Tortoises are trained by sound, so the trainer's instruments are musical: in this case a pipe and a drum, while nowadays a little bell is used. The