imagination
The bride’s corpse: the mystical story of the La Pascualita mannequin
The “great and terrible” Belgian Maestro Jan Fabre won fame with provocative paintings, sculptures, installations and art performances. His work is so shocking that the degree of strangeness can compete with the works of the famous Damien Hirst, but this did not prevent them from showing off in the halls of the Louvre itself, opposite the immortal masterpieces of medieval painters and sculptors. Horns and hooves, bones, blood and internal organs, insects, crosses and tombstones, skeletons, death and other devils – this is a short list of the foundations on which the extraordinary creativity of Jan Fabre is based. Well, and a part of him, of course, – it is also in every, without exception, the work of the Belgian sculptor. Continue reading
9 medieval curses that scared book thieves
The threat to go to the gallows may seem unnecessarily harsh for stealing a book, but this is just one example of a long-standing tradition of book curses. Before the invention of the printing press in the West, the cost of a single book could be enormous. As explained by the scientist-specialist in the middle Ages Eric Kwakkel, theft of books in those days were more like stealing a car today. Today there is a car alarm, and then there were chains, chests and.. curses.
The earliest such curses date back to the seventh century BC. They are found in Latin, the languages of various European Nations, Arabic, Greek, and other languages. Curses existed in some cases even in the age of printing, gradually disappearing as books became cheaper. Continue reading
