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NB! · Art · Books
In 1878
In 1878 Isaac Salkinson translated "Romeo and Juliet" into Hebrew as "Ram and Yael". Not long ago a copy of this edition, popular in the 19th century, was sold at a Jewish auction for $290, against a starting price of $100
NB! · Art · Humour
In the Year of the Rooster, Sleeping in a Bed with Roosters Promises Vigour and Good Omens, Especially One from the Eighteenth Century
NB! · Art · Observations · Humour
The allegory is that the mind can see what is hidden
The allegory is that the mind can see what is hidden. But why does the devil have his face between his legs?
NB! · Art · People · Nature
In Jacques-Louis David's famous portrait, Napoleon astride Marengo at the Great St Bernard Pass
In Jacques-Louis David's famous portrait, Napoleon astride Marengo at the Great St Bernard Pass. The horse would outlive his master by 10 years
NB! · Faith · Art
The Majolica Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden on the Floor of the Church of San Michele on Capri
NB! · Archive · Faith · Art
Scene of the burning of the martyr Eustace and his family in the belly of a brazen bull at the will of the Emperor Hadrian, from a thirteenth-century French manuscript of legends of the saints
Faith · Art · People
Saint Eustace, formerly the Roman soldier Placidus, and his martyrdom with his family
In the frescoes of Catholic cathedrals one can see a man in armour bearing a banner with a stag's head and a crucifix; often the same knight's coat of arms shows a brazen bull, and sometimes he has no heraldic devices at all but carries two
NB! · Faith · Art · Books · Monarchies · Mores
A touching detail from a fifteenth-century Utrecht Bible: beside the sickbed of an ailing queen hangs a tiny portrait of the king
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Observations
The portrait of Marie-Antoinette with her children was commissioned in 1785 from the fashionable portraitist Vigée Le Brun for 18,000 livres, a sum equivalent to more than 6 kg of 917-fineness gold, if I have not erred in my calculations
Faith · Art · Moscow · Observations · Humour
Symbols in a Vermeer painting and a video report on a Moscow woman who pinned a snake with a dustpan
In Vermeer's painting, the woman's gaze is turned to a scene of the Crucifixion, with John the Evangelist embodying wisdom. She holds her hand to her heart, which attests to her longing for God. She props up a terrestrial globe with her foot, which shows that
NB! · Faith · Art · Humour
Vermeer's Allegory of Faith: the serpent stands for Satan, and the stone for Jesus
Vermeer's Allegory of Faith: the serpent stands for Satan, and the stone for Jesus. It put me in mind of a Muscovite lady who pinned a snake that had crept in from the neighbours' flat under a rubbish bin and, in terror, awaited her son's