NB! · The East · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Observations
The Emperor of China enthroned. The Louvre Abu Dhabi has a similar tapestry with a Chinese figure in a boat. In some palace or other you will surely find a continuation of the story: in Europe, the adventures of the ruler of the Celestial Empire were all the fashion
NB! · Observations · Science · Palaeontology · Nature
The cub of an extinct lion lay in the frozen depths of the earth. It is an exceedingly rare find, on which I hasten to congratulate my colleagues toiling in Siberia!
NB! · Observations · Humour
Archive · Monarchies · Observations · Society · Paris · People
The French intellectual of the late nineteenth century Henri Vaugeois, known as one of the founders of the monarchist organisation Action Française, was an advocate, as he put it himself, of an “anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic, anti-parliamentary and anti-democratic” nationalism. In short, the full set of an obscurantist
Faith · Books · Observations · Mores · Society
The Theodosian Code, which appeared in the early 4th century, exerted a serious influence on the life of Europe, including on relations between Christians and Jews. The words of one of its laws, “it is perfectly clear that the sect of the Jews is forbidden by no law”, for instance,
NB! · Art · Observations · Mores · Pop Culture · Humour
A young woman helps an elderly lady to dress, presumably her granddaughter. Granny is a hundred times more stylish: lace, pearls, and in the casket patches of every size! Now that is cosmetics, not like Rihanna's
NB! · Art · Observations · Humour
A girl with the head of a woman of forty holds a switch to urge on an imaginary pony. The child from Arthur Devis's group portrait of 1740 is ready for the off
Archaeology · Faith · The East · Books · Observations
Vayera, the Torah portion read this week, is one of my favourites. Besides Abraham's circumcision and the news of Sarah's pregnancy, it tells how Abraham pleads for mercy for Sodom, yet the angels save from the city's inhabitants only the family of Abraham'
Observations · Society · Humour
In the fourth century the government of Rome commanded 30,000 officials. In the empire's heyday, in the first and second centuries, there was one official to every 5,000 subjects, which is to say some 10,000 to 12,000 officials in all. At the same time
Books · Observations · Science · Humour
There was a German historian named Otto Günzicker, who wrote, among other things, about the military reform of Diocletian. It is amusing that in his works he writes in some sort of Third Reich language and applies to the Romans such expressions as "fell in on the Platz"
NB! · Faith · Art · Observations · Humour
Van Joos, 1540. Jesus embraces his second cousin, John the Baptist. I do not recall anything of the kind from the Bible. Some sort of magic, it seems, must have transported John to Egypt to make the acquaintance of the Holy Family
Coming Up · Cinema · Moscow · Observations
In the film "Tender Age", the protagonist Kir Lopukhov, on the day before leaving for the front, says: "How can it be? A true Muscovite, and I have never once been to the planetarium." And on his last day in his native home he leaves his