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  The Melun Madonna Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels  (Right panel of The Melun Diptyche ) Oil on Oak panel, 94.5 X 85.5 cm, Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp, Belgium Painted by Jean Fouquet (French Renaissance), dated approximately 1452 "The Madonna is an arresting figure, with one breast bare, in front of a throne surrounded by blue and red angels representing night and day. She has the bulging shaved forehead fashionable at this period. The blanche-white skin, crown of stars, and pearls decorating the throne show Mary in her role as Queen of Heaven. The bare breast is abnormally placed and the waspish waste exaggerated, which separates the Virgin's image from more naturalised portrayals of nudity. This, along with the vivid colouring and her extreme beauty, gives the picture a strangely modern feel." (p. 92, Mary Cooch in 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die , Pier9, 2016) "She almost seems to be leaning against the throne. Although, if she were leaning, it w...

РИССЯ : ЯССИР (RUSSIA : AISSUR) "In the years before the Revolution, Russians had a favourite story about their ambassador to Washington, 'a grand seigneur of the old school' called Yuriy Bakhmetev. Called to the Secretary of State's office, he was surprised when the American, having greeted him politely, lounged back in his chair and crossed his feet on his desk. Sitting on the other side of the desk, Bakhmetev followed suit. The Secretary of State removed one foot; Bakhmetev did the same. And after a slight pause, the American removed the other." (Anna Reid, 2024,   A Nasty Little War , John Murray, London, p. 13) "In the first years after he arrived on the international scene, the tsar had stayed on the fringes a bit, with the classic attitudes of the Russian, whose papers are never fully in order and who has to submit to the detailed scrutiny of judges from more civilized parts. It's the age-old complex of the savage from the border-lands who has to a...

 ' The Peasant BODO' is found in historian Eileen Power's popular Medieval People , an early social history text that went through ten editions from 1924 to 1963. The frontispiece of my copy (1999, The Folio Society, London) appropriately includes a quote from the Venerable Bede, the first truly English historian, who finished writing his epic five volume Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum  in 731 AD. In this extract, the monk notes the essential unfairness of making a record of past people and events : "Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us ...  There be of them that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.  And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them."                                  ...