Art · Paris
Why was I born a slave? This heart-rending work by the French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, made in 1868-70, was conceived as a sketch for a major commission: the fountain opposite the Observatory in Paris. Four female figures on the fountain personified the four quarters of the world:
Art · Mores · Paris · People
Konstantin Somov, The Boxer. 1933. Somov emigrated to the United States in 1923, but stayed there only a year. The Russian artist found a new home in Paris, where he illustrated Pushkin's poems and mostly painted portraits. The boxer is the nineteen-year-old Boris Snezhkovsky, an artist&
Art · Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Paris
The Chaumet exhibition presents a magnificent tradition dating back to the seventeenth century: the corbeille de mariage, or wedding basket. The set of gifts that the bridegroom prepared for his bride was presented in a special casket in the shape of a vase with a lid. The chest was usually
Art · Monarchies · Mores · Paris
The Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise, by the artist Georges Rouget. The wedding of 1 April 1810 took place in the Louvre, where the architects Percier and Fontaine had rebuilt the Salon Carré as a chapel. The painting captures the moment when Cardinal Fesch blesses the couple; Napoleon and
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris
The roof of Notre-Dame, July 2019. As you can see, most of the structures are now made of reinforcing steel
Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Paris · Humour
Edward VII (1841-1910) had a special chair for amorous pursuits. Renowned for his unbridled appetites and colourful sexual adventures, the king preferred a particular contraption for comfortable lovemaking with two partners at once. A similar couch is on display at the Sex Machines Museum in Prague, together with a
Museums · Observations · Palaeontology · Paris · Nature
A human skeleton leaping onto the tip of a mammoth's tusk is not the only prank of the designers of the palaeontology hall at the Houston Museum of Natural Science; there are other diverting scenes, for instance, a group of human skeletons driving a mammoth, or a mammoth
NB! · Monarchies · Paris · Pop Culture · Humour
Art · Mores · Paris
Courtesans Go to the Louvre, 1586. "Courtesan" derives from the word court, which was, one way or another, the centre of courtly life and of state administration. Originally a "courtesan" was a person admitted to that court and initiated into certain matters: a courtier at a
Architecture · Paris · People
This strange and slightly daft creature, flying along the stone balustrade of a Neo-Renaissance mansion in the centre of Paris, is the banker Émile Gaillard. As you may have guessed, he came from a wealthy but provincial family. The banker assembled an enormous collection of medieval and Renaissance antiques,
NB! · Architecture · Books · Museums · Paris · People
The second floor is arranged in the Renaissance spirit. There is an enormous, solemn study with an adjoining tiny library, where Hugo housed the library he had rescued in exile, and a bedroom with carpets and tapestries of every conceivable colour. And a symbolic corridor leading upwards, ending in a
Architecture · Museums · Mores · Paris
On the ground floor are two spacious drawing rooms, the red and the blue, richly furnished with Chinese curiosities, hung with costly fabrics and adorned with unique pieces of furniture. Here the Hugo family received guests. True, not everyone within these walls was as happy as its creator, enchanted by