cruel prohibitions were
Two portraits of the actress Strepetova
There are destinies that strike the imagination with unusualness and inner completeness — such is the life of Pelageya Antipevna Strepetova (1850–1903), difficult and bright, full of dramatic turns. At the age of seven she first appeared on the stage. She was not yet fifteen, when she became a professional artist. And after a while rumors about her brilliant game began to spread throughout Russia. The very first performances of the provincial actress on the stages of Moscow and St. Petersburg literally stunned the theater audience, gave rise to the sincere admiration of some and the same sincere hostility of others. Continue reading
Syrian landscapes
Most of the landscape compositions by Syrian artists are devoted to old Damascus and the village of Maaloula, located in a picturesque mountain area near Damascus. She became a source of inspiration and a place of pilgrimage for Syrian landscape painters. The multi-tiered architecture of rural houses, clinging to the slopes of the mountains and picturesquely piled on top of each other, the romantic landscapes of the surroundings, the fertile valley spreading below, as if embodying the Syrian ideal dream of the beauty of the earth. Continue reading
Ordinary Magic Glass
The expression “Venetian glass” has become a household word. It is used in the appreciation of the artistic merit of glass. And it is not by chance that the largest museums of the world are proud of the works of the nameless glassmakers of Venice, along with the paintings of famous painters – their contemporaries: Titian, Carpaccio, Veronese, Giorgione. Particularly remarkable are the products of the XVI century – the truly “golden age” of Venetian glass. They all the more benefit when compared with the European glass of the preceding one and a half millennia: thick-walled, dull-green bottles, rough goblets in the form of a horn or a stalk with unwise ornaments. Continue reading
