The church of San Domenico in Nardò has strange similarities with another church, but which is located in Spain, in Valladolid.
The fruit baskets held on the heads of the cherubs on the sides of the central portal that recall Egyptian or Assyrian capitals. As if it were a Babylonian temple. Other symbols instead tell of a heretical or esoteric Christianity. For example the skull, the book and the sphere.
At the foot of the cross on Mount Calvary we find the skull. It would be the skull of Adam whose sinful and sacrilegious blood is washed with the innocent blood of Christ. The figure of the skull is also recognizable in the hands of some saints such as Francis of Assisi, Romuald, Jerome or Mary Magdalene. All this refers to the idea and concept of the transience of earthly life.
The book refers to Christianity as well as Judaism and Islam, also called the three religions of the Book. It is held in the hands of a Prophet or an Evangelist. Between the hands of the putti it indicates the importance of the Dominican rule.
Finally, the sphere, symbol of the manifestation of God, in theological terms the so-called Theophany. The sphere represents the symbol of perfection, of absolute regularity.
Parmenides, in the 6th-5th century BC, had already underlined how sphericity was a distinctive feature of the abstract entity that constitutes our cosmos, called Being by the philosopher from Elea, thus elevating the attribute of sphericity to the idea of perfection. Counter-Reformation Christianity re-proposes in symbolic terms the sculptural representation of the Sphere.
Olio d'Oliva E.V. 100 cl
Olio d'Oliva E.V. 250 cl
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