Faith · Art · People
The Face of Christ in a Single Spiralling Line. The Veil of Saint Veronica, copperplate engraving, 1649. By the French painter and engraver Claude Mellan (1598-1688)
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris
The long-awaited assembly of the timber roof structure of Notre-Dame de Paris. Beams from 200-year-old Breton oaks were delivered along the Seine, by the same route as during the original construction
Faith · Monarchies · Mores
Shortly before Peter I, that implacable foe of the beard, shaving was reckoned in the Russian state among the most pernicious of vices. The fashion for the razor was condemned by the clergy and restricted by the secular authorities. Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich forbade the shaving of beards outright, together with
Faith · Art · Books · Science · Nature
Next! Comrades, let us not hold up the queue! Engraving by Jan Luyken from the frontispiece of Cornelis van Dyck's Osteology, 1680. A tortoise, a hedgehog, a rabbit, a dog, a horse and a camel are leaving the frame. It is no accident that the almost biblical scene
NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Faith · Art · Books
Archive · Faith · Monarchies · Heritage
Private Ivan Babcock of the US Army tries on the crown of Charlemagne in a cave at Siegen, Germany, 3 April 1945. The chamber deep inside the mountain at Siegen was filled with treasures, from the golden reliquary holding the relics of Charlemagne and the Cross of Lothair to paintings
Faith · Art · Museums · Paris
The exhibition of Italian masterpieces "Naples in Paris" at the Louvre
Faith · Books
Dear friend, can you not see that all we see is only a reflection, only shadows of what is unseen by the eyes? Dear friend, can you not hear that life's crackling din is only a distorted echo of triumphant harmonies? Literal translation Dear friend, can you not
Faith · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Saint Petersburg
The poet Apollon Maykov prevents the painter Nikolai Kuznetsov from cutting off the head of the writer Ieronim Yasinsky, while the Symbolist Dmitry Merezhkovsky, in chains, contemplates the proceedings with detachment. 1888, Ilya Repin. This is just what Repin's painting "St Nicholas of Myra Saves Three Innocents
Architecture · Faith · Observations
The tower of St Mary's Church in the Norfolk village of Burgh St Peter looks remarkably like a ziggurat. Its stepped form, so uncharacteristic of Georgian Gothic, is in fact connected with funerary architecture. The tower was completed in stages after a vault was built here in 1793
Faith · Art · Observations · Humour
On first seeing Giovanni della Robbia's Adam and Eve, I was much amused to find that the serpent-tempter has, quite literally, Eve's face. This polychrome relief in glazed terracotta, illustrating the biblical parable of Adam and Eve, was made in Florence in 1515. Its details
NB! · Faith · People · Rome · Humour
Asked by an Italian television presenter which programmes he enjoyed in his youth, Pope Francis, aged 86, replied: “I'll let you in on a secret. When I was young, we had no television.”