NB! · Cinema · Observations

The Gladiator Is Not What He Was

NB! · Art · Pop Culture · Humour

What a Knightly Collaboration between Balenciaga and Maison Margiela Tabi Might Look Like

NB! · Geography · Art · Nature

A marble quarry in the Apuan Alps; many Renaissance sculptures were carved from the local stone

NB! · Museums · Nature · Humour

Napoleon's dog, his friend on Saint Helena, became after death a frightening stuffed specimen resembling a very sad seal

NB! · Observations · Mores · Humour

When they ask at the door of Popoff Kitchen whether you have anything forbidden

NB! · Archive · People · Society Pages

Alexander Vasiliev, Pyotr Fomenko and Edvard Radzinsky in an archive photograph from the Fomenko Workshop

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Or Name Your Price

NB! · Faith · Society · Rome

Pope Francis announced that this year the Church has lost 17 cardinals and 191 bishops, some of whom died of coronavirus

NB! · Moscow · Museums

At the State Historical Museum

Large gilded onion-dome fragment with ribs on a white pedestal. Its base is decorated with small arches holding shell-like rosettes; a museum gallery is visible behind.

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Gilded fragment of an onion dome with a carved base at an exhibition

A gilded ribbed onion-shaped dome model on a white plinth in a museum hall.

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Restored models of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral dome at the Museum of Architecture

Models of the dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour at the Restorer: A Profession exhibition in the Museum of Architecture. The models date from the 1840s and 1850s and were restored in our own time. They look very impressive; I had never looked at the Cathedral of Christ

Carved light wood relief of a bearded, half-naked man with a hand raised to his mouth, surrounded by curling flames.

NB! · Art · Museums · Observations · Humour

Sixteenth-century memento mori with a chained figure in a boxwood coffin amid flames

A sixteenth-century memento mori: a figurine in a boxwood coffin, chained and ringed with flames, somewhat recalls the plasticine works of the contemporary artist Tatyana Brodach. Let us be frank: the fellow burning in hell comes off rather better