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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: The Museum of the Dead. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

The Museum of the Dead
by possibly noteworthy at 9:00 pm EDT, May 21, 2008

Not far from our hotel in the center of Palermo is Oratorio di San Lorenzo, a little Baroque church founded by one of those orders that looks after the unwanted dead. The space is crammed with plaster skulls and skeletons, mostly painted, but the last chapel on the right held what we had come to see: matching pairs of stucco corpses by the sculptor Giacomo Serpotta, who could impart life and motion to all kinds of unlikely entities, such as abstract Virtues and tired old scriptural stories. These are called skeletons in the guidebook, but at least half the flesh still clings to the bones, especially on the chest and diaphragm. They've also kept their original grime; in the shadows, the stark white flesh is almost black with it.


 
 
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