Faith · Monarchies · People · Saint Petersburg

Alexander I was born on 12 December 1777, the year of the great flood in Saint Petersburg, which afflicted hundreds of thousands of people and killed thousands

Alexander I was born on 12 December 1777, the year of the great flood in Saint Petersburg, which afflicted hundreds of thousands of people and killed thousands. The Emperor died on 1 December 1825, 12 months and 12 days after the second-largest flood in the city's history.

Faith · Art · Observations · Humour

Sad faces and Balthazar's golden ship in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's “Adoration of the Magi”

In Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "Adoration of the Magi" everyone looks thoroughly miserable, though the occasion is, broadly speaking, a happy one: the birth of a saviour. And then there is Balthazar, the only guest who has brought a decent present: a golden ship with a

Archaeology · Faith · The East · Heritage

History of the Supposed House of Joseph and the Virgin from the 1st Century to the 2006 Study

Pictured: the house traditionally regarded as the home of Joseph and the Virgin Mary. Well, the monument does indeed date from the 1st century AD: one wall of the house survives in full, along with part of the floor and a doorway. The walls of the dwelling were hewn out

In a museum display case stand four painted wooden figures: Christ with outstretched arms and three figures beside him.

NB! · Faith · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris

Umbrian Deposition of the thirteenth century in the Louvre and its likeness to Russian northern carving

The Deposition from the Cross, second quarter of the 13th century, Umbria, Louvre. The three-dimensional, life-size figures of polychrome poplar, willow and walnut wood recall the church sculpture of the Russian North.

Faith · Art · Observations

But in general, looking at the Neapolitan bone multi-figure stele of the casting out of Lucifer, it is hard not to recall the equally populous works of the contemporary British artists, the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, who likewise use motifs…

Faith · Art · Madrid · Museums

Naples had an excellent school of carving not only in stone, but also in bone

Naples had an excellent school of carving not only in stone, but also in bone. And if the famous sculpture in the Sansevero Chapel showed a man struggling free from the net of vice, then the treasury of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain holds, for example, a 40-centimetre

Architecture · Faith · Art

Pelican as a Symbol of Self-Sacrifice on a Bench in Lund Cathedral

Hard to recognise, but this is a pelican, captured on the side panel of one of the wooden pews in Lund Cathedral. A traditional medieval Christian symbol of self-sacrifice, often associated with Jesus, the pelican was frequently depicted tearing open its breast to feed its hungry chicks with its

Faith · Monarchies · Observations · Ethnography · Humour

I doubt you will see anything more touching today than Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, pressing noses with indigenous New Zealanders, air force officers and elders, during the ceremonial…

The hongi is the traditional Maori greeting, based on the belief that the nose is the centre of the body and that the divine breath passes through it, so that touching the tips of noses makes people close: they have shared one divine breath and are, as it were, united

A black square on an old book page, with the Latin inscription Et sic in infinitum along all four sides.

NB! · Faith · Art · Books · Science

Robert Fludd depicted the void before the creation of the world as a black square in 1607

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

Flooding of San Moisè church in Venice endangers Torretto's crucifix and Corradini's pietà

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

A Man Entangled in a Net of Lies and Vices

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

Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Society

Sports hall in Mogilev Choral Synagogue building and a plaque that omits the synagogue

The building of the Choral Synagogue of Mogilev, known as the Zukerman Synagogue, was erected in the late nineteenth century on the ruins of the burnt-out palace of the Catholic bishop Bohusz-Siestrzeńcewicz. Today it houses a sports hall. A memorial plaque on the building tells the history of