NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

The allegory is that the mind can see what is hidden

The allegory is that the mind can see what is hidden. But why does the devil have his face between his legs?

NB! · Faith · Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

That Goblet of Fire from Harry Potter looks remarkably like the reliquary of Cosmas and Damian

A gilded reliquary with a crystal vessel holding bones, dragon-shaped handles, silver wings and a red seal.

NB! · Faith · Observations · Heritage

Reliquary with the bones of the holy unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian

A reliquary with the bones of the holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian, venerated in both the Catholic and the Orthodox traditions. I do not know to which of the three pairs of saints bearing these names the relics belong

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Observations

The portrait of Marie-Antoinette with her children was commissioned in 1785 from the fashionable portraitist Vigée Le Brun for 18,000 livres, a sum equivalent to more than 6 kg of 917-fineness gold, if I have not erred in my calculations

A blue silk sofa with a gilded frame beneath a portrait of a child with a dog in a green room, with bobbins lying on the sofa.

NB! · Museums · Observations · Humour

How Visitors Are Kept From Sitting on an Antique Sofa in a Museum Interior

Bobbins on the sofa so that no one sits down, and a walkie-talkie to summon security if the bobbins fail. In short, everything essential for receiving guests. And welcome, as they say :)

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Paris

I remember how, at the house of Georges Clemenceau, a lady could not make out who it was with the salamanders

I remember how, at the house of Georges Clemenceau, a lady could not make out who it was with the salamanders. Whereupon I, in short trousers, explained that the salamander is the emblem of Francis I, and that it often lurks in his portraits

Faith · Art · Moscow · Observations · Humour

Symbols in a Vermeer painting and a video report on a Moscow woman who pinned a snake with a dustpan

In Vermeer's painting, the woman's gaze is turned to a scene of the Crucifixion, with John the Evangelist embodying wisdom. She holds her hand to her heart, which attests to her longing for God. She props up a terrestrial globe with her foot, which shows that

NB! · Observations · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour

Since the new American president is the theme of the evening, here are some mastodons

Since the new American president is the theme of the evening, here are some mastodons. The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, believed that mastodons still roamed America and asked the Lewis and Clark expedition to find them

NB! · Archaeology · Observations · Ethnography

One would rather that, instead of the hackneyed cliché about the tip of the iceberg, people spoke of the figures of Easter Island, most of whose bodies lie hidden beneath the earth

Archaeology · Observations · Science

There are two views on the origin of syphilis: that Columbus's sailors brought it from the New World, and that Europeans had known the disease since ancient times

Each version has its evidence: the first epidemic of syphilis did indeed break out after the American expedition, yet diseases resembling syphilis are described by Cornelius Celsus, Claudius Galen and Avicenna, and besides there have been finds of afflicted Neolithic bones. Be that as it may, similar diseases were treated

NB! · Museums · Observations · Mores · Humour

I look at this little commode from the Château de Chambord and cannot see how such exhibits square with the myth that at Versailles, for instance, courtiers relieved themselves behind curtains in the corridors

I look at this little commode from the Château de Chambord and cannot see how such exhibits square with the myth that at Versailles, for instance, courtiers relieved themselves behind curtains in the corridors. The eternal story of the lift versus the lavatory

NB! · Coming Up · Museums · Observations · Palaeontology

Tomorrow at 11.00 the Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore will present a 120-million-year-old ichthyosaur skull with four nostrils

Tomorrow at 11.00 the Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore will present a 120-million-year-old ichthyosaur skull with four nostrils. I would happily go myself. Those of you in Ulyanovsk, do not miss your chance