Faith · Art · Madrid · Museums · Rome

Two El Greco sketches for a Madrid polyptych in Palazzo Barberini, Rome

To see an El Greco in the flesh is a great stroke of luck. Of the slightly more than a hundred surviving works by El Greco in the world, Russia holds, for example, just five, and Italy eleven, of which Rome has only two, both in the Palazzo Barberini. These

Coming Up · Art · Museums · Rome

Until 16 June the Quirinal Palace in Rome hosts the exhibition “Napoli Ottocento”, that is, “Naples, the Nineteenth Century”

At the end of the eighteenth century the discovery of the ruins of Pompeii, the great popularity of the Grand Tour among the aristocracy and the enlightened elite, the fascination with the incessant eruptions of Vesuvius and the love of romantic landscapes made Naples the third city of Europe, after

Museums · Observations · Society · Paris

Six months ago I wrote about the warm-up exercises performed in the Louvre before "The Battle of Arbela", and now it has emerged that the Louvre and four major Parisian museums will take part in the events of the Olympic Games

Six months ago I wrote about the warm-up exercises performed in the Louvre before "The Battle of Arbela", and now it has emerged that the Louvre and four major Parisian museums will take part in the events of the Olympic Games. The Louvre, the Orsay, the Orangerie

A rectangular ceramic dish printed with a calendar for 1887 hangs on a wall with copper-coloured patterned wallpaper.

NB! · Art · Museums · Observations

Ceramic Wall Calendar for 1887 in the Chekhov House Museum

A ceramic wall calendar for 1887 in the form of a rectangular dish. The Chekhov House Museum. The first I have ever seen

Coming Up · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Mores

What to Visit in Moscow Right Now?

What is worth visiting in Moscow right now? The Museum of Moscow has opened a remarkable, very large and capacious exhibition, rich in allusions: “Moskvichka. Women of the Soviet Capital in the 1920s and 1930s”. The museum's team spent a year and a half preparing the project, and

Moscow · Museums · Observations · People

If, like me, you spent years riding the “Bukashka” along the Garden Ring and, hearing the announcement of the stop “Chekhov House-Museum”, thought: “The Chekhov museum, I really must go in”, then right now, for example, there is a curious exhibition there

Thanks to the exhibition, which has the witty title “I Have No Better Photograph”, I learned that Anton Pavlovich was very fond of being photographed. True, he was not particularly inclined to change his pose. There are dozens of pictures taken many years apart in which he sits literally in

NB! · Books · Moscow · Museums

The pen with which Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard

The pen with which Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov House Museum, Moscow

NB! · Geography · Museums · Humour

All Olympian gods who descend for a short while into a mortal body to wander the city streets, the taverns or, as in our case, the museums, must bear in mind that the road from Athens to Mount Olympus is no short one, and the journey by post-horse will ta

Archive · Art · Museums · Humour

“Two Hermeses”: guide Nikolaos Zafeiropoulos beside the statue of Hermes in an Athens museum, 1935

Hermes in Marble and Hermes in the Flesh. In 1935 the photojournalist Vasilios Tsakirakis took a photograph of a stranger in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The man, who turned out to be a guide named Nikolaos Zafeiropoulos, proved to be uncannily like the statue of Hermes, a copy

Architecture · Art · Museums

The della Robbia dynasty and works by Andrea, nephew of Luca, in the Bargello Museum

Someone says "della Robbia", and you hear "Florentine glazed painted ceramics". This family gave the world a whole galaxy of notable maiolica masters. Vasari, indeed, directly names the eldest of the sculptors of the della Robbia family, Luca, of the fifteenth century, as the inventor of

Black and white engraving of elephants bathing in a river, with people and two horsemen standing on the bank under a large tree.

NB! · Archive · Art · Museums · Nature

Elephants bathing in an engraving of 1682 from the Rijksmuseum

Elephants frolicking in the water. Engraving, 1682. Rijksmuseum

Faith · Art · Books · Museums · Paris · Nature

At the exhibition "The Medieval Bestiary" at the Musée de Chantilly: a Flemish manuscript of the late fifteenth century, the Mirror of Human Salvation, with a scene of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

On the wall of the Earthly Paradise sits a Peacock, which in the Middle Ages was associated with the sin of pride, the very pride that made Adam and Eve think they could be equal to God?