The Horseman

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 1969

Sculptor: Fulgencio Garcia

Size (cm): 48*33

Porcelain Story

Michel de Nostrdam was born on December 15, 1503, in Saint-Remy, Provence. His ancestors were many famous physicians. Yes, and Michel's father Jacques de Nostrdam was also a doctor. So a special choice of profession in front of the young man was not present. True, he first received a master's degree in Avignon. But after successfully completing his studies in the medical department of the University of Montpellier, he became a doctor and for greater importance began to write his name in the Latin manner - Nostradamus.

There was a time when the ungrateful citizens of Ajen, where Nostradamus lived and where he had lost his wife and children to plague, saved many people, accused him of heresy. He was so accused that the famous doctor and soothsayer had to hide from the Inquisition. But then he decided to return to his native land. And, moving from town to town, continued to save thousands of people from the plague. This activity soon brought him a well-deserved fame and honour, and a lot of money.

Nostradamus married again, he had six children. His fame as a successful doctor and soothsayer reached the royal court. Catherine de Medici herself became a zealous admirer of Nostradamus, making him first court physician and astrologer, and then even an adviser to King Henry II. Often Catherine climbed with Nostradamus to the tower next to the Parisian church of St. Ostache to observe the movement of celestial bodies.

Nostradamus is best known to contemporaries and future generations for predicting many events in his lifetime and centuries after his departure. His quatrains, written in various languages, are seen by some as great prophecies and by others as equally great charlatanism. I am not at liberty to judge. I would only note that in the history of mankind only two books have been published with a centuries-long regularity and continue to be published in huge numbers: the Bible and "The Predictions of Michel Nostradamus".

By the way, he was perhaps the only soothsayer to give an astonishingly accurate date and time of his departure. And he left this world at the height of his fame on 2 July 1566, leaving an inscription that can still be read today on a stone slab in St Lawrence Church in the city of Salon: "Here lie the bones of the famous Michel Nostradamus, the only mortal who proved worthy to record with his almost divine pen, thanks to the influence of the stars, the future events of the world"...