Architecture · Faith · Art · Museums · Society · Paris

Digest of channel posts from the first two weeks of February on Paris, culture and history

A guide to the posts published on the channel in the first two weeks of February. Besides a great many posts about Paris, there was cultural news, surveys of social problems and astonishing stories from the past. 📌 The story of Saint Plautilla, who handed her veil to the Apostle Paul

Faith · Heritage · Rome

In the little Roman basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, in the left aisle of the church, a reliquary is kept containing the skull of the Christian priest Valentine, who may be that very saint glorified in 496

There were several Christian figures of roughly the same period bearing the name Valentine, and alas, there is no way of establishing precisely which of the surviving remains are those of a saint. But the skull from Santa Maria in Cosmedin is venerated by many

Faith · Art · Museums · Paris · Pop Culture

Wooden figure of Saint Mary Magdalene by Gregor Erhart, La Belle Allemande, 1510, Louvre collection

And photographs of Nicole Kidman from Vogue Australia, 1994, shot by Rocky Schenk

Faith · Museums · Heritage

Forty items, including seven 17th-century icons, return to the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum

Forty historic objects have returned to the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve after restoration. Among them are 7 icons of the seventeenth century from the monasteries of the Russian North: Ferapontov, Kirillo-Belozersky and the Nilo-Sorsky Hermitage, restored by specialists of the Saint Tikhon's Orthodox Humanitarian University (PSTGU)

NB! · Faith · Art · Paris

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Laurent de La Hyre, 1637

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Laurent de La Hyre, 1637. Notre-Dame de Paris

Faith · Society

According to a new report by a non-governmental human rights organisation monitoring intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC; headquartered in Vienna, Austria), in 2023 in 35 European countries there were…

Most of the incidents are acts of vandalism against churches (62% of the total), desecration of Christian holy places (24%), arson (10%), threats (8%) and physical violence (7%). The report singles out the following flagrant cases: an attack with a machete by a Moroccan national on clergy and parishioners of

Madonna and Child enthroned in a gilded frame, surrounded by angels, with a friar in a Franciscan habit on the left and a kneeling angel holding a dish on the right.

NB! · Faith · Art

The Virgin Mary appears to Saint Francis at the Porziuncola in a painting of around 1450

The Apparition of the Virgin Mary to Saint Francis at the Porziuncola, c. 1450.

Faith · Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg

A Very Unusual Three-Hypostasis Icon

A very unusual three-hypostasis icon. The New Testament Trinity, 1812. An icon from the collection of the State Museum of the History of Religion, at the exhibition "The Russian Incredible" at the Zotov Centre

In a dark temple interior a beam of light falls on an old man holding an infant and a woman in blue, with a crowd around and a figure in crimson robes at left.

NB! · Faith · Art

Rembrandt's 1631 painting of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Rembrandt, 1631

Faith · Art · Rome

Plautilla's Veil in Christian Iconography of the Apostle Paul's Beheading

Paul called out to her: "Greetings, Plautilla, daughter of eternal salvation! Lend me the kerchief with which you cover your head, and go yourself beyond the barrier for the people and wait there until I return to you and give back your alms. I shall bind my eyes with

Faith · Art · Museums · Rome

Giotto depicts the kerchief returned to Plautilla on the back of the Stefaneschi Triptych

The Roman noblewoman Plautilla gave Saint Paul her headscarf so that he would have something to blindfold himself with at his execution. Saint Paul promised to return the scarf after his death. On the reverse of the panel showing the beheading of Paul, in the Stefaneschi Triptych, Giotto depicted the

A haloed saint in a brown habit stands on a rock and bends towards a shark on the shore, with other fish visible in the water behind.

Faith · Art · Humour

Saint Anthony preaches to the fish in a painting by Arnold Böcklin

Saint Anthony Preaching to the Fishes. Arnold Böcklin The shark is positively moved