Faith · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Saint Petersburg
The poet Apollon Maykov prevents the painter Nikolai Kuznetsov from cutting off the head of the writer Ieronim Yasinsky, while the Symbolist Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in chains, contemplates the proceedings with detachment. 1888, Ilya Repin. This is just what Repin's painting "St Nicholas of Myra Saves Three Innocents
Archive · Art · Books · Science
In the historic Herzog August Library in the German town of Wolfenbüttel is kept a mysterious sixteenth-century manuscript with numerous watercolour drawings of solid geometric figures accompanied by small beasts and birds, and entirely without text, save for a few inscribed words: “Geometry and perspective. Regular solids.” There are
Art · Museums · Observations · Paris
Two in a box. My favourite drawing from the exhibition "Degas in Black and White", drawn from the collection of the Department of Prints and Photography of the National Library of France. In all, the exhibition presents 160 rarely shown works by Edgar Degas: etchings, lithographs, drawings in
NB! · Art · Pop Culture · Humour
Faith · Art · Observations · Humour
On first seeing Giovanni della Robbia's Adam and Eve, I was much amused to find that the serpent-tempter has, quite literally, Eve's face. This polychrome relief in glazed terracotta, illustrating the biblical parable of Adam and Eve, was made in Florence in 1515. Its details
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Art · Monarchies · Museums · Nature
Sandringham House is displaying a replica of Elizabeth II's coronation robe made from plants. Twenty-four florists selected a variety of leaves and blooms so that they could be arranged into a robe and patterns closely resembling the royal originals. Pampas grass, a great many cereal grasses, ferns,
Art · Museums · People
Repin painted his last self-portrait in 1920, at the age of 76. Those years proved a very hard time in his life. His wife had been dead for some years, and for some years he had been cut off from family and friends by borders: after the revolution the
Archive · Art · Museums · People
"...I love art more than virtue, more than people, than my nearest and dearest, than my friends, more than any happiness or joys of our life," from Ilya Repin's letter to the art critic Stasov. In this studio on the first floor of his house Repin
Archive · Art · Museums · Observations · Society
Portrait of a Boy with a Book. Unknown artist, first half of the nineteenth century. Collection of the Romanov Museum, Kostroma Museum-Reserve. The book reads: “Military Regulations. Left, forward, march.” Two hundred years have passed, and how familiar the wording still is! The first half of the nineteenth century
Art · Museums · Heritage
The artist's signature is not easily found on the painting; it is hidden in the decoration of the pot. The canvas was bought in an antique shop in the 1950s as the work of an unknown artist, but the buyer, the art historian Felix Vishnevsky, discovered the concealed
Art
The Boy with the Chips. The British artist John Lines (b. 1938)