Architecture · Monarchies · Mores · Humour
If you too fell for the gossip that Louis-Philippe was a nasty piece of work and a scoundrel, perhaps this charming lift, which he devised and installed at the Château de Fontainebleau in 1840 for his elderly sister, will make you think again. Then again, even scoundrels love their
Aristocracy · Art · Museums · Mores · People
The international campaign opens with a day of women in world culture. I propose that we recall Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's favourite sister, whose famous sculptural portrait is considered one of the masterpieces of Antonio Canova. The aristocrat Camillo Borghese commissioned the work as a wedding gift for his
Books · Observations · Mores · Rome
What the Romans wore, how they furnished their houses and what they talked about, we can picture quite well; but what an ordinary Roman dinner looked like came as a revelation to me personally. In one epigram Martial lists the dainties prepared for his table, inviting a friend to a
Archaeology · Museums · Mores · Rome · Humour
An idea for the Met Gala. The madcap hairstyle of this Roman lady, which resembles a wasps' nest, was the last word in fashion in the Flavian era, when the women of Rome at last abandoned the plain parting, the single-coloured headscarf, the plait or the straight hair
Faith · Art · Museums · Mores · Rome
Caravaggio painted the Virgin Mary from Rome's most famous prostitute, Maddalena Antognetti, known as Lena, yet her child is the very embodiment of holy simplicity, for he is not to blame for his mother's transgressions, and he even tramples the symbol of sin. The canvas even
Observations · Mores · Rome
Books · Observations · Mores · Rome
Continuing the tale of cult gastronomic haunts, I recalled a Roman café founded in 1760. The cosy Antico Caffe Greco, beside the Spanish Steps, was frequented by Stendhal, Casanova, Andersen and Schopenhauer. The walls of this little coffee house are hung with portraits of its world-famous habitués and adorned
Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Mores
@sncmag, it is a great pity that these interiors are now closed to visitors. For if we speak of the truly iconic establishments of Moscow, then it is, of course, the "Praga", opened as long ago as 1872. True, at that time it was rather a tavern, and
Art · Observations · Mores · People · Humour
Portrait of the Reverend Thomas Gisborne and his wife Mary. A splendid umbrella, a cool dog and a remarkable likeness: do you not think so? He and his wife might be twins. People used to murmur that Gisborne had married for money: the girl from the wealthy Babington family was
Books · Observations · Mores
GAYEV. Once, sister, you and I slept in this very room, and now I am fifty-one years old, strange as it may seem... LOPAKHIN. Yes, time goes on. GAYEV. What? LOPAKHIN. Time, I say, goes on. GAYEV. And it smells of patchouli here. As for this «patchouli» in The
Cinema · Books · Mores
Gender of the Day: Enchanted April. Strange as it may seem, gloom, private misfortunes and dramas retreat into the background with the coming of the sun. Whoever you may be, a disenchanted madonna or an elderly prude, a deserted society beauty or an ecstatic little ingénue, April is always a
Books · Moscow · Observations · Mores · Saint Petersburg
The much-discussed “Kofemania” and its clientele are not merely a portrait of our times. Whenever I visit one of my favourite branches, the one on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, I find myself, for some reason, transported into the atmosphere of the celebrated nineteenth-century Petersburg coffee house of “Wolff and Béranger”