alks alks@todon.eu

My profile picture is a 1869 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme depicting the bust of a Black Bashi-Bazouk in a three-quarter back-view. They're wearing a colorful turban, and an exquisite pink silk tunic. Showing their profile, the subject has a dignified stance. A musket rests on their shoulder.

The header image is a seventeenth century still-life apparently from the Dutch painter Jan Davidsz De Heem, mainly comprising piles of well-used books. It signals the vanity of scholarly life.