NB! · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris

Mood for the week: a porcelain Bolognese of the Meissen Manufactory, 1734

Mood for the week: a porcelain Bolognese of the Meissen Manufactory, 1734. Modelled by Johann Joachim Kändler, collection of the Louvre, donor a former consul of the Ottoman Empire in France, Isaac de Camondo

Triple gold ring with five stones, blue and pale ones at the sides and a green stone in the centre, photographed on a light background.

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums

Roman gold ring for three fingers, made in the 3rd century AD

Roman gold ring for three fingers. 3rd century AD.

Art · Museums · Observations

Washington statue, Napoleon portrait and Hermitage Jupiter modelled on Phidias's Zeus

George Washington and Napoleon in the Guise of Zeus-Jupiter. The magnificent marble Washington was commissioned by Congress in 1832 to mark the centenary of the first president's birth. The sculpture is the work of Horatio Greenough. Today the statue, 3.5 metres high, is displayed in the

NB! · Museums · Heritage

Winter Footwear of a German Serviceman from the Russian Campaign of the Second World War

Museums · Observations · Heritage · Society · Nature

Yesterday came the news that the governor of Smolensk is stripping the Khmelita museum-reserve of its status as a specially protected natural area

Yesterday came the news that the governor of Smolensk is stripping the Khmelita museum-reserve of its status as a specially protected natural area. I am very fond of Khmelita and have been there many times, so I immediately approached the museum's management for comment, and I return

Books · Museums · Observations · People · Humour

Facts about Beethoven's mother from Koblenz refute the myth of his African origin

We have already heard about a black Napoleon; now it turns out that Beethoven was black too. One wonders who is next in line: Shakespeare? The author of this theory has even published a book, but not one of the facts he cites as proof of Beethoven's African

Marble head of bearded Zeus with curly hair showing red and brown pigment, seen behind a glass display case.

NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums

Head of Zeus with traces of red and brown pigment in the Cyrene museum

Head of Zeus with traces of its original colouring. Red and brown pigment is well preserved on the hair. Archaeological Museum of Cyrene, Libya

NB! · Archaeology · Architecture · Museums

Model of the Pergamon Altar, Berlin

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Madrid · Museums · People

The Spanish consul in Egypt in the 1880s, Eduardo Toda y Güell, dressed as a mummy, and the collection of Egyptian antiquities assembled by him and sold in 1887, to the number of 1300 items, to the National Archaeological Museum of Spain

Archaeology · Monarchies · Museums

Decorative shield from Louis the Pious's chapel was probably made no earlier than the 11th century

A shield made of elk antler, from the Rijksmuseum collection. According to its catalogue description, the decorative shield comes from the funerary chapel of the Frankish king Louis the Pious. It is sometimes called “the shield of Charlemagne”, Louis the Pious having been Charlemagne's son. Still, the ornamental

Architecture · Museums · Observations

Concrete replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, built for an exhibition and now a museum

In Nashville, Tennessee, there stands an exact full-size replica of the Athenian Parthenon, built in the city park between 1897 and 1931. An exact copy, with the proviso that no ancient calculations, technologies or materials were used in its construction. Naturally, the Nashville Parthenon is made not of flawless

Faith · Art · Museums

Saint Sebastian of 1490 by the painter of the early Italian Renaissance Andrea Mantegna, and a barely noticeable detail: an inscription on the ribbon wound around the candle, "nil nisi divinum stabile est caetera fumus", which means "only the divine…

The dying flame symbolises the life of the saint himself, departing towards the heavens, to which his last gaze is turned. But the arrows of martyrdom promise eternal life. Mantegna has other Sebastians too, in the Dresden and Louvre collections. This one is from the Franchetti collection in Venice.