The Library Of Marienstatt Cistercian Monastery, Germany.

Isaac Levitan - "In the Vicinity of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery"

Azure Grotto, Naples (1841) by Ivan Aivazovsky

William Morris (1834-1896） Tree of Life

The Lady of the Lake, Albert Sangorski, Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur, 1912

Bran Castle, Romania (by JK)

A phenomenally enameled silver Swept-hilt Rapier, Germany, ca. 1606, housed at the Staaliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

A weathered statue of an angel at a cemetery in Lviv.

| by Alexander Zvir

Yesterday I visited the Penates - the house of Russian painter Ilya Repin. It stands surrounded by pine forest, and the Bay of Finland is a 5 minute walk from the house.

The wooden house is very Russian style with little roofs and multiple terraces and enamel fireplaces in every room. There's a large studio on the second floor with large windows and skylights to allow as much natural light in as possible.

Repin was a very prolific painter and a huge name in his day, but also a bit of an eccentric. He always slept in a small unheated terrace, even through the winter. Him and his wife were vegetarian and practiced no-help dinner parties (with no servants at the door or the table). His weekly dinner parties on Wednesdays were attended by a multitude of artists, musicians, scientists. He was friends with Gorky, Mayakovsky, Chukovsky, Tolstoy, Yesenin etc. etc.

(Last picture: Ilya Repin paints opera singer Fyodor Shalyapin in his studio, 1914.)

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova, 1913