NB! · Faith · Art · Books · Science
Fludd's Black Square, which is just how the English thinker and philosopher of the 16th and 17th centuries, Robert Fludd, depicted in 1607 the emptiness of the world before its creation. Darkness, the infinite nothing. On all four sides of the square runs the inscription Et sic in
Architecture · Faith · Art · Heritage
The baroque church of San Moisè, which John Ruskin called the clumsiest building in Venice, has been flooded. One of the chief treasures of the church, a wooden crucifix, among the few works in wood by the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Torretto, is floating in the water, and the pietà by
Aristocracy · Architecture · Faith · Art · Mores
There are various ways of honouring one's parents. Raimondo di Sangro, the seventh Prince of Sansevero, a Neapolitan, commissioned a sculptural portrait of his father disentangling himself from the nets, or snares, of deceit and sin, accompanied by an angelic figure who frees the sinner for the bosom
Aristocracy · Art · Books · Mores
Girls who wanted happiness. Happiness... Georges Moreau de Tours, The Morphine Addicts. I remind you that this pernicious dependence was extremely popular in aristocratic and bohemian circles in the nineteenth century. The fashion, which spread from England, is shown by Leo Tolstoy in the case of Anna Karenina, whose personality
Art · Mores
Children's portraits, Samuel Moon. The child in the peach-coloured frock is a boy, as the boyish toy, a gun, indicates. Right up to the end of the nineteenth century, children's fashion was to a large degree characterised by unisex clothing, though for some reason with
Art · Monarchies · Observations · People · Humour
Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany is customarily regarded as an unproductive, dull and mediocre ruler. To me, it takes a fine sense of humour to commission the court painter to make portraits of one's own harvest. The tongue simply refuses to call it a still life, this
NB! · Art · New York · Society Pages · Humour
And now, the pride bulletin. Sergei Gordeev, the owner of PIK, has lost a million dollars to the art historian Ilyin, having maintained that he was the richest man at the Guggenheim Foundation dinner.
Art · Museums · Humour
Giovanni Bellini's Pietà, 1465-1470, presented to the Pinacoteca di Brera in 1811 by Napoleon's stepson Eugène de Beauharnais, who had taken the panel from the rich Sampieri collection
Art · Moscow · Museums · Humour
A visitor standing before "Lenin in Smolny" asked whether it was true that Brodsky had given the bald head an extra glow so that it would look like a halo. The guide replied that no, of course not: the bald head simply had to be set off from
Archaeology · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Humour
In Holbein's portrait, Henry VIII is wearing some seriously cool white leather loafers. This type of footwear was popular in Renaissance England, and such slippers became widespread in court circles precisely in the early sixteenth century, though they had to compete with another fashionable model, the heeled shoe.
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Observations · People · Humour
Marie Antoinette as a hyena. The hairstyle is odd, of course
NB! · Art · Cinema · Monarchies · Museums · Paris · Pop Culture