153
True, the originality and beauty of carvings and images constituted an aesthetic experience aimed at everyone in the city. But one cannot help thinking that this complex text, with its erudite cross-referencing, was partly conceived with the more literate and bookish administrative and literati class in mind. After all, attracting the upper and educated classes had recently evolved as a novel Jesuit method of missionization that had borne rich fruit for Matteo Ricci and his confreres in the Chinese mainland.
One of the Chinese inscriptions states: 'The Holy Mother tramples on the dragon's head,' a reference to the Book of Genesis (Fig. 19). Both the left and the right scrolls have carved inscriptions in relief (as opposed to those explaining the dragon, which are incised), consisting of six large vertical characters. Like those on the dragon, they explain the two images spreading horizontally across the scroll inside a frame. The ones on the left, before the claws of another strange monster, with tail, short antlers, a snout, large bat's wings, breasts and shot through with an arrow, read: "The Devil tempts mankind to do evil things" (Fig. 20).
On the right we read: 'Remember Death and do not sin,' a kind of memento mori epigram at the bony feet of a grimacing skeleton also shot through with an arrow (Fig. 19).
Main Image
References to the Devil, who tempts humanity to sin (whose wages is death), form part of the complicated iconography of the façade. Directly or indirectly the entire iconographic programme revolves around its titular image depicting the Assumption of Mary (Fig. 21).
It is the largest bronze in the frontispiece, measuring practically six feet in height, and like all the bronzes of the façade of rather shallow 3-D casting and flat at the base. It is surrounded by reliefs of music-playing and incense-burning angels, amongst the finest in colonial religious imagery by East Asian artists (Fig. 22). The Assumption is combined with an Infant Salvator Mundi in the attic above, and with the Dove of the Holy Spirit in the pediment (Fig. 23).
The Virgin's Assumption in bodily form into heaven is one of the
153
True, the originality and beauty of carvings and images constituted an aesthetic experience aimed at everyone in the city. But one cannot help thinking that this complex, text, with its erudite cross-referencing. was partly conceived with the more literate and bookish administrative and literati class in mind. After all, attracting the upper and educated classes had recently evolved as a novel Jesuit method of missionization that had borne rich fruit for Matteo Ricci and his confreres in the Chinese mainland.
One of the Chinese inscriptions states: 'The Holy Mother tramples on the dragon's head,' a reference to the Book of Genesis (Fig. 19). Both the left and the right scrolls have carved inscriptions in relief (as opposed to those explaining the dragon, which are incised), consisting of six large vertical characters. Like those on the dragon, they explain the two images spreading horizontally across the scroll inside a frame. The ones on the left, before the claws of another strange monster, with tail, short antlers, a snout, large bat's wings, breasts and shot through with an arrow, read: The Devil tempts mankind to do evil things" (Fig. 201
On the right we read: 'Remember Death and do not sin," a kind of memento mori epigram at the bony feet of a grimacing skeleton also shot through with an arrow (Fig. 19).
Main Image
References to the Devil, who tempts humanity to sin (whose wages is death), form part of the complicated iconography of the façade. Directly or indirectly the entire iconographic programme revolves around its titular image depicting the Assumption of Mary (Fig. 21)
It is the largest bronze in the frontispiece, measuring practically six feet in height, and like all the bronzes of the façade of rather shallow 3-D casting and flat at the base. It is surrounded by reliefs of music- playing and incense-burning angels, amongst the finest in colonial religious imagery by East Asian artists (Fig.22). The Assumption is combined with an Infant Salvator Mundi in the attic above, and with the Dove of the Holy Spirit in the pediment (Fig. 23).
The Virgin's Assumption in bodily form into heaven is one of the
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