Art · People
Pushkin did not know Vermeer. Nor did Gogol. Nor Lermontov. Not even Dostoevsky! For it was only in the 1860s that Vermeer's paintings were rediscovered for the public, by a French critic of socialist convictions, Étienne Joseph Théophile Thoré, who wrote under the pseudonym Willem Bürger (or, in
NB! · Interviews · Cinema · Science · People
Art · Science · People
Blaise Pascal, the outstanding French inventor, mathematician, thinker and, in many respects, altogether advanced man. Sculpture by Augustin Pajou, housed at the University of Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. Pascal is known for a number of mathematical and physical discoveries with which we become acquainted as early as school: Pascal'
Aristocracy · Art · People
Portrait of Pyotr Ivanovich Potemkin (1617-1700), who served under Alexey Mikhailovich, Feodor III, Ivan V and Peter I, by Godfrey Kneller, English painter at the court of three English kings: Charles II, William III and George I. Potemkin was, one might say, a diplomat by inheritance: his grandfather had
Almaty · Art · Cinema · Observations · People
There is a film called “Sergei Kalmykov: A Man Visible from the Stars”. It is about an incredible Soviet artist and mystic who lived in Alma-Ata. Kalmykov moved to Kazakhstan in the late 1930s, when storm clouds began to gather over the circle of mystics, and in Alma-Ata
Archive · Books · People
"Innocent Speeches", "Peasant Women", "Dreams", "The Wife", "Three Sisters": these and other editions of Chekhov published in his lifetime have been made freely available by the National Electronic Library in honour of Anton Pavlovich's 160th birthday, as part
Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · People · Reportage
Today marks the 130th birthday of the Russian architect Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov. In honour of the jubilarian, my team and I from the Shchusev Museum of Architecture visited the surviving Moscow monuments of his work. A sorry picture, it must be said. All of them, with the exception of the
Archive · Books · Mores · People · Pop Culture
The German accountant Matthäus Schwarz decided to gather in a single book every outfit he had ever worn, annotate them at length and explain the circumstances that had prompted him to choose those very costumes. The fascinating life of a humble bookkeeper, from his childhood, when at the age of
Museums · Heritage · Mores · People
Chekhov bought Melikhovo after a long search for suitable property in other regions: he came across an advertisement in a newspaper and all but sight unseen decided to take it. It was the first house of their own, one might say, since the days of serfdom, and the whole large
Museums · Heritage · People · Nature
Not many trees that witnessed the Chekhov era have survived at Melikhovo. There are, for example, two Berlin poplars planted by the keeper and organiser of the local household, the father of the family, the former serf Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov. The peace of the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old
Architecture · Books · Museums · People
At Melikhovo, which Chekhov bought in 1892, he, who had never had a house of his own, acquired for the first time a study of his own, of which he wrote: "I sit in my study with its three large Italian windows and live in blissful content." The
Books · Museums · Heritage · People · Reportage
Today we travelled with the intellectual Club 418 to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's favourite estate, Melikhovo, which became the true family nest of the Chekhovs and gave the world dozens of works of Chekhovian classic. This year the Chekhov Museum at Melikhovo celebrates its 80th anniversary, and Anton Pavlovich