NB! · Art · Moscow · People

Moscow of the Seventeenth Century, Apollinary Vasnetsov

Aerial view of children on a blue playground, casting long shadows, with an orange ball nearby.

NB! · Art · People

German photographer Katrin Korfmann and her images of people in public spaces

A photograph by Katrin Korfmann. A German photographer, Korfmann specialises in pictures of how people interact in public spaces

Oval painted portrait of Napoleon in a green coat with a white waistcoat and gold epaulettes against a dark background.

Art · Observations · People

Portrait of Napoleon by an unknown artist of the early 19th century

What a mug! For the moment, this is my favourite portrait of Napoleon. Unknown artist, early nineteenth century

Black-and-white photograph of an elderly man with a white beard and glasses, seated in a chair with his hands folded on his lap.

Books · Observations · Science · People

Photographic portrait of Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky seated in a chair

The Triumph of Historical Criticism: Overhearing, in What the People of a Given Time Say, What They Kept Silent About. Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky

Page of an old French book with rhymed text, with the start of Scene IV at the bottom, where Anne speaks alone.

Books · Monarchies · People

Anna Leopoldovna in Fallot’s 1765 tragedy “The Death of Ivan”

"We shall see time change our misfortunes." "That time is far off, for a perverse world will seek the means to oppose, unceasingly, the happiness of our days." Without hope, without illusions, and with prophetic accuracy, Anna Leopoldovna, condemned to confinement for the rest of her

Art · People · Pop Culture

Swimming costumes created by Sonia Delaunay in the 1920s, when the bulky bathing dresses that covered the whole body gave way to more compact, close-fitting swimsuits with bare arms and legs

Delaunay's first swimsuits were still made of knitted fabric, wool jersey, but later began to be produced in silk as well. Sonia Delaunay was a French artist, a native of the Poltava Governorate, who grew up in Odessa and Saint Petersburg and left to study in Europe at

Observations · Society · People

Two views of Robespierre, dictator of the Terror and defender of France

Since so much attention has been paid to beheading in French history, one might also recall the execution of Robespierre, who mounted the scaffold on the night of 27 to 28 July 1794, 230 years ago. On the one hand, this was the end of the Terror, the death of

Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · People

Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Joseph Kreutzinger and the Children of Maria Theresa

Marie Antoinette in hunting dress. The portrait by Joseph Kreutzinger of 1771 was one of the favourites of Marie Antoinette's mother, Empress Maria Theresa, although she disliked her daughter's habit of hunting on horseback. Maria Theresa, herself a legendary woman of European history, had 16 children.

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Education · People

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford. How quickly other people's princesses grow up

NB! · People · Pop Culture · Humour

The French freak-singer Philippe Katerine as a drunken Silenus, or perhaps the embodiment of the allegory of alchemical mercury, which refers to Mercury and personifies both the passage from the higher to the lower and androgyny?

Art · Mores · Paris · People

Surgeon Samuel Pozzi, his romance with Sarah Bernhardt and her 1915 leg amputation

The celebrated surgeon and simply the handsomest man of his day, Samuel Jean Pozzi, captured in an equally celebrated portrait by John Singer Sargent, was the hero of numerous love affairs. One of them bound him to the greatest actress of her age, Sarah Bernhardt. The vivid romance between the

NB! · Archive · Cinema · People · Pop Culture