Art · Monarchies · Observations · Paris · Humour

Vincenzo Vela's Sculpture of Napoleon's Death at the 1867 Exhibition

At the slightest indisposition I feel like Napoleon on Saint Helena in Vincenzo Vela's sculpture The Last Moments of Napoleon I. This sculptural portrait of the dying Bonaparte was a great success at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, and the statue was eventually acquired by Emperor

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

Arnold Böcklin's Sleeping Forest, 1885

Arnold Böcklin's Sleeping Forest, 1885. And the unicorn is not as handsome as they say

Still life with red berries and a white flower on a stone ledge against a dark background.

NB! · Art · Observations · Nature · Humour

Dutch seventeenth-century painter Adriaen Coorte and his still life with berries

Bought strawberries at the market for 150 roubles a kilo; they say they are from Greece, though the price tag says "Azerbaijan". Tasteless, so clearly Greece: all the fruit there is plastic, nothing but the smell. Anyway, until our own strawberries ripen, let us look at the seventeenth-

Seen from behind, three figures wrapped in cloth and bound with ropes stand on a hanging wooden platform against a blue sky.

NB! · Art

The 1975 painting “Family Portrait” by Teodor Pištěk

Family Portrait. Teodor Pištěk, 1975

NB! · Faith · Art · People

Magdalena Luther, Daughter of Martin Luther

Magdalena Luther, daughter of Martin Luther. Portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The girl lived only 13 years

NB! · Art · Observations

The Housing-Office Art One Would Like to See

NB! · Archive · Art · People

Claude Monet in His Garden at Giverny

Art · Moscow · Observations · Society Pages

Three contemporary art galleries open in Moscow, two on Prechistenskaya Embankment

In just a few days, three new galleries of contemporary art have opened in Moscow: Beton, Sasha Blanar's Serene and Ilya Ovcharenko's Nakovalnya. The last two, moreover, stand in neighbouring buildings on Prechistenskaya Embankment. At Serene, the première was a women's group exhibition, “Light

Painting by Rubens: a nude, grey-bearded Saturn with a scythe on a long shaft sinks his teeth into the chest of a screaming infant.

NB! · Art · Madrid · Museums · Humour

The Subject of Saturn Devouring His Son in Rubens and Goya Compared

Saturn Devouring His Son, as performed by Rubens and Goya. Next to the second, the first looks like an innocent nibble

Art · Ethnography · Humour

Mummified gnome in a tiny coffin proved to be the work of a Swedish prop artist

And what have we here? A mummified gnome in a little 27-centimetre coffin, with a note that reads: "This little house gnome was found by my father, Jan Petersson, in the winter of 1866, in the wall of an old barn. He was already dead." It is

Archive · Art · People

Ilya Glazunov in 1991 on Chaadaev's words and the secret of time for an artist

"I recall Chaadaev's words that an artist may be as clever as you please, but if he does not know the secret of his time, he is no artist. And what is the secret of time? It seems to me it is, above all, the real alignment

Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Eduard Steinberg, Vasily Chekrygin, Rembrandt and Goya: the Pushkin Museum Opens an Exhibition Uniting Four Names from Different Eras

Eduard Steinberg, Vasily Chekrygin, Rembrandt and Goya: the Pushkin Museum has opened an exhibition uniting these four names from different eras. The finitude of being, the contradictions of worldly foundations and the attainment of eternity are seen through the prism of Rembrandt's sublime etchings and Francisco Goya'