Art · Moscow · Museums

The Sleeping Princess and the “Dove Book” in the Last Painting of the “Poem of Seven Fairy Tales” Cycle

The poetic and original "Sleeping Princess", completed by Vasnetsov a year before his death, in 1926, is considered one of his finest paintings. The princess has fallen asleep together with the entire sovereign's court; even the bear that was to have danced at her wedding is

Aristocracy · Art · Museums · Mores

The Meissen figure “Tailor Riding a Goat” by Kendler and Count von Brühl's tailor

The Tailor Astride a Goat by Johann Joachim Kändler is a rather popular subject in Meissen porcelain of the 18th and 19th centuries. The tailor comes in various versions: sometimes the shears hang from a horn, sometimes they rest on the goat's head, sometimes they are in the

Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg

Repin on his 1903 painting “What Freedom!” and Stasov’s view of it

A Wind, but Not of Change. Ilya Repin's painting What Freedom! (1903) symbolises, in the critic Stasov's judgement, Russian youth who had not lost their courage, hopes and joyful expectations amid the misfortunes that beset them. By Repin's own account, he was simply walking

Faith · Art · Museums · Paris

Cain and Abel, Leonello Spada, 1614

The exhibition of Italian masterpieces "Naples in Paris" at the Louvre

Interior of a log house with walls, ceiling and furniture covered in bright floral painting, with a table and benches by the windows.

NB! · Architecture · Art · Museums · Ethnography

Olav Hanssen's 1784 house with rosemaling decoration in the Heddal museum

Heddal Museum of Traditional Norwegian Folk Art, a house of 1784 built by Olav Hansen. The walls and ceiling are decorated with the folk painting known as rosemaling

Art · Moscow · Museums · Education

“Pushkinsky for All” section on the Pushkin Museum website offers art lectures in sign language

The Pushkin Museum website has an excellent page of lectures and videos about art in sign language, including an account of the main masterpieces in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts collection in International Sign. The section is called "The Pushkin for All"

NB! · The East · Art · Cinema · Museums · Saint Petersburg · Humour

A Kirghiz convict painted by Vasily Perov in 1873 looks exactly like Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow

A Kirghiz convict painted by Vasily Perov in 1873 looks exactly like Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. Collection of the Russian Museum

NB! · Art · Mores · Pop Culture

Barbie's Life in a Communal Flat

Barbie's Life in a Communal Flat. Lara Vychuzhanina

Two doll figures in a room with floral wallpaper: an old man in a dark robe and yellow scarf and a young man in a frock coat with a cane, amid cobwebs and papers.

NB! · Art · Books

Chichikov's Visit to Plyushkin in a Doll Staging by Lara Vychuzhanina

Chichikov Visits Plyushkin. By Lara Vychuzhanina

A bronze chimera with a lion's head, a goat's head on its back and a snake for a tail stands on a wooden base.

Archaeology · Art · Museums

Bronze sculpture of a chimera in the Archaeological Museum of Florence

The Chimera of Arezzo, 5th century BC. Archaeological Museum of Florence

Art · Humour

Milestones of Life

Milestones of life. Jan Baptist Weenix, 1650s. According to this rather common seventeenth-century scheme of the ages and stages of life, the summit of existence falls at the age of 50. On the last step stands the figure 90. Weenix himself died at 38

NB! · Art · Humour