Monarchies · Mores · People · Humour

Queen Victoria and the Fashion for Jewellery Made from Teeth and Hair

Queen Victoria had a strange fondness for teeth. Whether it began when her mother commissioned a gold brooch containing a milk tooth of her eldest daughter, Princess Vicky, or earlier still, the passion grew into an impressive collection of jewellery set with teeth. Among Victoria's best-known pieces

NB! · Faith · Monarchies · People

Clovis I (466-511) chose as his emblem a shield with three toads; according to legend, after Clovis's baptism an angel replaced it with a shield bearing golden lilies, which for many centuries would symbolise royal power in France

Archive · The East · Books · Observations · People

The Case of the Noulens Couple in China and the Fate of Spy Tatyana Moiseenko-Velikaya

The book about the intelligence officer Ruth Werner contains an episode on the exposure of Comintern agents in China. In 1931 the exposures of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern began. Arrested were the "director of internal communications" of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of

NB! · Faith · Art · People

Alexey Bogolyubov, Easter in Yaroslavl, 1863

On the left, a facial reconstruction of a man with a moustache and beard; on the right, a 3D scan of a skull overlaid on half of that face.

NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Science · People

2010 Examination Confirmed That the Skull Belonged to Henry IV

In 2010 an osteological examination proved that the famous skull really did belong to Henry IV. This was established from the traces of a mole on the nose of the mummified head and from a piercing in the right ear

Monarchies · Heritage · Paris · People

The head of Henry IV, separated from his body when the Abbey of Saint-Denis was looted

Since we are on the subject of lost skulls, another set of aristocratic remains was left without its head. Henry IV (1553-1610), whom I mentioned the other day (https://theparnassian.com/schitaetsia-chto-vo-vremia-sozdaniia-kartiny-favoritka-genrikha-iv-byla-beremenna-pervym-ego-synom-kotorogo-nazovut-sezarom-v-

Museums · Observations · Heritage · Society · People

A historian on Kholmogorov linking Kenesary Khan's head to Kazakhstan's Latin script

Kholmogorov absurdly links the handover of Khan Kenesary's head to Kazakhstan with the Kazakh script's switch to the Latin alphabet. The head, he says, has not been handed over yet, so one may "answer" the Kazakhs' farewell to Cyrillic with a moratorium on

NB! · Art · Society · People

Look at the self-portrait of the celebrated Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera, in which she appears to be painting a portrait of her sister, and guess why feminists have chosen her as their heroine

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Paris · People

Gabrielle d'Estrées, favourite of Henry IV, her family and her death in 1599

It is believed that at the time the painting was made, the favourite of Henry IV was pregnant with his first son, who would be named César after Julius Caesar. The pregnancy may be hinted at by the woman in the background sewing children's clothes, and by the

Almaty · Books · Society · People · Saint Petersburg

Dzhambul Dzhabayev addresses the people of Leningrad in a poem of September 1941

Jambyl Jabayev Leningraders, my children! Leningraders, my pride! In the current of the steppe stream I see a glint of the Neva's current. If along the snowy ridges I glide my aged gaze, I see the arches of your bridges, The blueness of the Baltic dawns, The swarms

Almaty · Books · Moscow · Observations · Society · People

Akyn Jambul became famous in 1936 after the decade of Kazakh art in Moscow

The Kazakh poet Dzhambul won fame very late: he became known only in 1936, when he was already very old. It cannot be said that nothing had been heard of him before. Dzhambul Dzhabayev was surrounded by a large family and was, by all accounts, a distinguished akyn, the victor

Faith · Art · Madrid · Observations · People

Fra Angelico and his altarpiece Annunciations, the first now kept in the Prado

The Early Renaissance Italian painter Guido di Pietro, known as the "blessed angelic brother" Fra Angelico, has been canonised and is regarded as the patron saint of artists. He made his name through his altar paintings. Fra Angelico's most famous subject is the Annunciation to the