Faith · Art · Moscow · Museums

The Pushkin Museum Acquires “The Adoration of the Magi” by Otto van Veen, Teacher of Rubens

The Pushkin Museum has acquired the painting "The Adoration of the Magi" by Otto van Veen, one of the greatest Flemish masters of the 17th century and the chief teacher and mentor of Rubens. The painting was executed by the celebrated master in his Antwerp period, around 1600.

NB! · Faith · Art · Observations · Humour

Lucas Cranach shrewdly observed that one small bite of the forbidden fruit was quite enough for Adam and Eve

Fresco detail: a grey-bearded old man in a pink cloak looks over his shoulder, with other figures in yellow and blue robes beside him.

NB! · Art · People · Rome

Daniele da Volterra portrayed his friend Michelangelo as an apostle in a fresco in Rome

Portrait of Michelangelo in the guise of one of Christ's apostles. Michelangelo sat for the portrait for his friend Daniele da Volterra, who later transferred it to a fresco in Rome

Architecture · Art · Mores · Paris

France's first glass house, built for Jean Dalsace between 1928 and 1932

Maison de Verre, the House of Glass: Pierre Chareau's ambitious and avant-garde project in Paris, at 31 Rue Saint-Guillaume. The house was built between 1928 and 1932 for Dr Jean Dalsace, a physician and well-known Communist, and a close friend of the designer Pierre Chareau,

Architecture · Art · Paris · People

Furniture by the French architect and designer Pierre Chareau, 1920s and 1930s

Furniture by the French architect and designer Pierre Chareau, 1920s and 1930s. Today the pieces of furniture and decor created by Chareau sell for tens of thousands of euros. Even the most modest of them, a small paper holder, went at auction in 2021 for 8 thousand. The gallery shows

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Humour

Dutch provinces as a cow in a 16th-century caricature with Philip II, Elizabeth and William of Orange

The Dutch provinces in the guise of a cow: Philip II of Spain tries to ride her, Elizabeth, Queen of England, feeds her, while William the Silent, Prince of Orange, puts his mouth to the udder to milk her. The Duke of Anjou, who holds the beast by the tail,

Archive · Art · Books · People

Alexander the Great in a glass submarine on a French miniature of the 15th century

Medieval legends attribute to Alexander the Great a passion for exploring the natural world, notably in a glass submarine in which he sat with a cockerel, a cat and a dog. In this miniature from a fifteenth-century French book, "The True History of the Good King", an

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Art

Wrestlers on Greek coins of the 5th–4th centuries BC from Aspendos, an ancient Greco-Roman city in Antalya Province

End wall of a high-rise residential block painted with warped balconies that create the illusion of a bending façade, seen against the evening sky.

NB! · Architecture · Art

Street art by Shozy on the firewall of a residential tower block in Zheleznodorozhny

This house has gone mad. A superb piece of street art on the blind end wall of a multi-storey block of flats in the town of Zheleznodorozhny, by the artist Shozy.

NB! · Art · Museums · Paris

Rembrandt, Lion Resting, 1645/1650, Louvre collection

NB! · Archive · Art · Mores

Terrifying Physiognomic Pictures