Faith · Art · Observations · Society

The revival of the cappa magna vestment and the dispute over church aesthetics

It is hard to call today's conditions the greatest calamity in the history of a mankind that has seen real grief, poverty and hunger in its recent past. So the attacks on the outward manifestations of church tradition are rather an aesthetic dispute, of the kind that took

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Observations · Mores

Wedding banquet of Joseph and Isabella at the Hofburg, golden service and sugar sculptures

That very wedding banquet of Joseph and Isabella, open to the widest public, was held in the Hofburg, the winter palace of the Austrian Habsburgs. At the centre of a table that looks modest beside the expanse of the colossal hall sat the imperial couple, Francis I Stephen and Maria

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Mores

Van Meytens depicts the wedding procession of Joseph and Isabella entering Vienna

Most of the festivities in honour of the wedding of Archduke Joseph and Infanta Isabella of Parma, naturally, took place in Vienna. One of Van Meytens's paintings captures the entry into the city of a ceremonial procession of 90 carriages. However, in those years Vienna had no square

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Mores

When the heir of the Austrian Habsburgs, Archduke Joseph, married the Spanish Infanta Isabella of the Italian cadet branch of the French Bourbons, his formidable mother, Empress Maria Theresa, commissioned a series of paintings, a sort of reportage from…

When the heir of the Austrian Habsburgs, Archduke Joseph, married the Spanish Infanta Isabella of the Italian cadet branch of the French Bourbons, his formidable mother, Empress Maria Theresa, commissioned a series of paintings, a sort of reportage from the magnificent wedding festivities, from the court painter Martin van Meytens.

Art · Monarchies · Observations · People

Henry FitzRoy in a cap in his portrait and possible reasons for the image

I do not know why Henry FitzRoy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and yet his heir, came to be captured in a nightcap in this portrait. I think the version that he simply did not want to climb out of bed, even when the artist had already arrived, and

NB! · Architecture · Art · Moscow · Observations

I have never seen anything like it: the Palekh Hall in the Sats Theatre, with huge lacquer panels of theatrical scenes by artists of the Palekh workshop of the 1970s and 1980s

Art · Observations · Society

Sergey Grigoryev’s 1950 painting “Discussion of a Bad Mark” and Soviet upbringing

Discussing a Fail Mark, 1950, Sergey Grigoryev, Stalin Prize. The canvas is criticised for the parallelism of its lines to the picture plane, the primitive arrangement of its figures and its simplified palette. The artist's merit lies rather in outlining the genre's range and shaping a

Art · Moscow · Observations · Heritage

Quietly and without idle applause, a great date in world theatrical history has passed: the Natalia Sats Academic Children's Musical Theatre, the first professional musical theatre for children in the world, a theatre that for the first time in history de

Quietly and without idle applause, a great date in world theatrical history has passed: the Academic Children's Musical Theatre named after Natalia Sats has turned 55. It is the first professional musical theatre for children in the world, a theatre that for the first time in history devoted

Art · Cinema · Observations · Nature

When I see the work of the British naturalist artist Charles Tunnicliffe (1901-1979), who spent most of his life on the island of Anglesey at peace with the world around him, drawing scenes from the lives of birds and animals, I am invariably reminded of

When I see the work of the British naturalist artist Charles Tunnicliffe (1901-1979), who spent most of his life on the island of Anglesey at peace with the world around him, drawing scenes from the lives of birds and animals, I am invariably reminded of the Soviet cartoon of

Art · Books · Humour

This is how the morning after the first snow might look somewhere in a prefabricated castle on the outskirts of Eastern Biryullia

But this is in fact an illustration by the British artist Angela Barrett for the 1993 Snow White. The Queen lets three drops of blood fall on the snow, having pricked herself while sewing pearls onto a length of brocade, and wishes for a beautiful child with white skin, dark

Close-up of a stone relief in which the hand of one figure holds the hand of another, beside folds of clothing.

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Art · Humour

Persian courtier leads a Greek envoy by the hand to the king in a Persepolis relief

What is high diplomacy? Here, for example, a Persian courtier tenderly holds the hand of a Greek envoy as he escorts him to the royal throne. Detail of a sculpted frieze from Persepolis, Iran, photograph by Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Art · Museums · Science

Charles Bell painted tetanus in 1809 after seeing soldiers wounded at Corunna

A painting by the surgeon Charles Bell, 1809, hangs in the Edinburgh Surgeons' Hall. Bell resolved to paint this canvas after witnessing the torments of tetanus among wounded British soldiers following the battle against Napoleon's troops at Corunna. The picture captures the final stage of tetanus, when