Two officers in white tunics talk in front of a line of conscripts in peasant and town clothes on an open field.

Art · Museums · Society · Saint Petersburg

Lukian Popov depicted army conscription during the Russo-Japanese War

Mobilised (Taken), 1904. Conscription into the army during the Russo-Japanese War. Lukian Vasilyevich Popov. Collection of the State Russian Museum

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums · Humour

In the Secret Cabinet of the Naples Museum there is a depiction of a Pompeian fresco in which a satyr creeps up on a sleeping nymph, discovers that it is a hermaphrodite, and promptly tries to flee in horror, while the two-sexed object of his desire tries

Marble sculptural group on a slab, showing Hermaphroditus from behind wrestling with a satyr who is falling backwards.

Archaeology · Art · Mores

First-century AD symplegma of Hermaphroditus and a satyr from ancient Oplontis

I Do Not Love You, and That Is My Chief Virtue! A sculptural group of entwined bodies is called a symplegma. The symplegma of the 1st century AD, found in ancient Oplontis, depicts Hermaphroditus and a Satyr. Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is undergoing an extraordinary metamorphosis, while

NB! · Art · Observations

I dream of a kitchen with a view from the window, like the one in this 2017 painting by Jennifer Diehl

Architecture · Art · Monarchies · Museums

Maurizio Cattelan's suspended horse, the 1997 work “Novecento” at the Rivoli museum

Anyone who has been to Turin cannot fail to remember the horse suspended from the dome of the former residence of the House of Savoy at Rivoli, which has housed a museum of contemporary art since 1984. Quite literally the subject of a nature morte, a still life, it is

Detail of an old painting: part of a woman's face in a white headdress with a fly painted on it.

Art · Humour

The Master of Frankfurt portrays himself with his wife in a self-portrait of 1496

When the Landlady Was Telling the Truth About There Being No Cockroaches. Self-Portrait of the Master of Frankfurt with His Wife, 1496

NB! · Art · Observations · Education · Humour

Perhaps everyone has seen this already, but the crib sheets of a Spanish student at the University of Málaga, published by his lecturer, really do look like a work of art

NB! · Art

View of Dresden by Full Moon

View of Dresden by full moon. The Norwegian painter Johan Christian Clausen Dahl, 1839

Close-up of an eye on a painting made with thick, textured brushstrokes of yellow, orange, green and red.

NB! · Art · Observations

Van Gogh and Rembrandt as a subject for reflection on painting

Van Gogh and Rembrandt. Food for thought

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums · New York

Bronze ceremonial helmet of a high-ranking warrior, 1500-1100 BC

Bronze ceremonial helmet of a high-ranking warrior, 1500-1100 BC. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NB! · Art

Cupid and Psyche, Jacob Jordaens, 17th Century

Coming Up · Art · Museums · Observations · Saint Petersburg

The “Zertsalo” exhibition on Russian provincial portraiture of the 18th and 19th centuries at the Manege

A remarkable exhibition of Russian provincial portraiture of the 18th and 19th centuries, "Zertsalo" ("The Mirror"), is on at the Manege in Saint Petersburg. Although most of the artists and most of the faces portrayed remain unknown, the curators have managed, within these terem chambers, to