Seven paintings on a pale pink wall: Pierrot and Harlequin, portraits of two women and a man, a bridge over a river and wooded landscapes.

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Museum wall with portraits and landscapes in gilded frames

NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · Saint Petersburg

Display of the exhibition "Sergei Shchukin's Choice"

The display of the exhibition "Sergei Shchukin's Choice. The Birth of Modern Art" at the Hermitage reproduces the hanging of the paintings in Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin's Moscow house, in the Music Room, the Pink Drawing Room, the Large Dining Room, the Cézanne Study and

NB! · Faith · The East · Rome

Today at Mass in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, the Georgian Patriarchal Choir of His Holiness Ilia II sings

NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Beloved Jeanne Samary, Beloved Renoir, Beloved Pushkin Museum

NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · Society Pages

At the opening of the grand exhibition of the collection of Mikhail and Ivan Morozov, "Brother Ivan", at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts: Piotrovsky, Golikova, Shvydkoy, Tregulova, Loshak, Ernst

Painting of churning blue-green water in front of old brick and wooden buildings with a water wheel.

NB! · Art · Nature

“The Water Mill”, a 1892 painting by the Norwegian artist Frits Thaulow

This is not nature grown pure, but the astonishingly realistic water of the Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow. The Watermill, 1892

Byzantine-style icon: a haloed saint with long white hair and beard, in an orange robe, raises both palms. A wreath of leaves surrounds him below; a Greek inscription reads «Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΔΑΥΙΔ».

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Icon of Saint David: an elder with a white beard amid foliage

A vendor in glasses and a woman with a bag at market stalls piled with tomatoes, peaches and beans.

NB! · Archive · Mores

Giulio Corinaldi's photograph of the Rialto market in Venice, 1960

The Rialto Market, Venice, 1960. Photo by Giulio Corinaldi

A man dressed as a Roman legionary, in a helmet with a white plume and a golden cuirass, stands on cobbles with other costumed participants behind him.

NB! · Observations · Humour

Costumed Roman legionaries on a street in York

The Roman legions have entered York. I can picture the elderly Ford Fiestas, Renault Clios and knackered Volkswagen Golfs somewhere on the backstreets of Fulford, plastered with stickers reading “England Is Rome”, “On to Londinium” and, of course, “We Can Do It Again!”

NB! · Art · Museums

Telemachus Recognises Odysseus in the Presence of Athena

Telemachus recognises Odysseus in the presence of Athena. Lionel Royer, Musée de Tessé

NB! · Architecture

An Art Nouveau lift in Otto Wagner's Majolica House, built in 1898 in Vienna, Austria

Black-and-white photo of boys in shorts lying on a granite plinth with a large urn on a square, a metro station pavilion behind them.

NB! · Archive · Moscow · Observations

Children sunbathing near Arbatskaya metro station in Moscow in the 1960s

Children sunbathing near Arbatskaya metro station in the 1960s. Consider how much more human and simple life in Moscow was sixty years ago. Today the city is deprived of such ordinary joys, yet it is drowning in formal conveniences