Faith · Art · People

Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, 1481-82

The work was never completed, and the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned the Adoration from Filippino Lippi instead. Leonardo depicted the Magi differently from the accepted manner: they do not walk one after another bearing their gifts, but worship the infant Christ simultaneously, as he sits in the

NB! · Faith · Observations · Humour

Sunday School Lessons Were Not Wasted

Faith · Cinema · Pop Culture · Humour

Chris Hemsworth in a dress recalls how the cunning Thrym thought he would marry the fairest of the goddesses, Freyja, whom he demanded as ransom for Thor's stolen hammer, only to discover beneath the bridal veil a monster in a gown: Thor himself…

Chris Hemsworth in a dress recalls how the cunning Thrym thought he would marry the fairest of the goddesses, Freyja, whom he demanded as ransom for Thor's stolen hammer, only to discover beneath the bridal veil a monster in a gown: Thor himself had arrived in the guise

NB! · Faith · Art

Saint Sebastian, Raphael, before 1504

The apostle Thomas touches the wound in Christ's side while three other apostles look on, one of them an elderly man in glasses.

Faith · Art · Museums

Hendrick ter Brugghen painted “The Incredulity of Thomas” in 1622, now in the Rijksmuseum

Doubting Thomas. 1622. And he has brought witnesses, one of them even in spectacles. Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629), Rijksmuseum collection

Faith · Monarchies · Museums · Science

Walking mechanical monk of the 16th century in the Smithsonian collection

The Getty research and education project tells the story of this unique artefact, created at the meeting point of science, art and religion. An almost supernatural automaton, 40 centimetres tall and 450 years old, in the form of a monk. The walking, gesticulating wooden figure belongs to the collection of

Gilded bronze figure of Saint Sebastian tied to a dark trunk, in a museum room with red walls and portraits.

Faith · Art

Pietro Tacca's bronze Saint Sebastian tied to a tree, made around 1624

Saint Sebastian tied to a tree. Bronze. Early Baroque, c. 1624. Made by Pietro Tacca (1577-1640), chief assistant to Giambologna and his successor as court sculptor to the Medici

NB! · Faith · Art

The Dormition of Saint Mary Magdalene, Silvestro dei Gherarducci, 1380s

NB! · Faith · Observations

The Uniform of the Vatican's Swiss Guard in the Seventeenth and Twenty-First Centuries

Faith · Art · Books · Observations · Humour

When They Ask What I Do with All These Books

Engravings by Albrecht Dürer, 1498, and Vasily Koren, 1690s. Saint John eating the book. Revelation 10:9 “And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the

Faith · Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg

Rembrandt painting from the Duke de Caderousse collection acquired by Prince Golitsyn

The Return of the Prodigal Son: one of Rembrandt's last paintings, one of the chief masterpieces of the Hermitage and one of the greatest canvases in human history. The painting is most often dated to 1666-1669. But since very little is known about the last years of

Painting detail: the head of the Virgin in a sheer veil with lowered eyes, and a flat golden disc halo above her.

NB! · Faith · Art

The Golden Halo of the Virgin in Piero della Francesca's Polyptych of Saint Anthony

Piero della Francesca, Polyptych of Saint Anthony. The Virgin's halo, a single plate of solid gold in which her head is reflected