A skeleton lies impaled by an arrow beside a curved scythe blade in sculpture carved by Japanese and Chinese Christians in the early 1600s blending Chinese, Jesuit Roman Catholic and Portuguese colonial themes on the surviving granite south facade of the ruined Church of Saint Paul in Santo António, Macau, China.
Ruins of St Paul’s, Santo António, Macau, China: a skeleton lies impaled and felled by an arrow, its head within the curved blade of a scythe, in 1600s sculpture blending European, Roman Catholic and Chinese culture and art on the ruined granite facade of the former Church of São Paulo, the only part of the structure to survive a disastrous fire in 1835. The former Jesuit Church of Saint Paul, also known as Mater Dei, was built in the early 17th century for the Portuguese men and women who had begun to colonise Macau a few decades earlier. At the time, it was one of the largest churches in Asia, but the fortunes of both the hilltop religious complex and Macau itself declined due to competition from nearby Hong Kong. The fire during a typhoon in 1835 left most of the church in ruins. The south facade, built in an unusual Sino-Baroque style and approached by a wide flight of 68 stone steps, was sculpted between 1620 and 1627 by exiled Japanese Christians and local craftsmen under the direction of Genoese Jesuit, Carlo Spinola. The carvings include other Jesuit images with an Oriental character, including the Virgin Mary stepping on the seven heads of a scaly hydra and St Mary protecting a galleon representing the Church as it sails through a Storm of Sin. In the early 1990s, calls for the dangerously leaning structure to be demolished were ignored in favour of excavations that revealed the church’s crypt and foundations. Many religious artefacts were found, together with relics of Chinese Christian martyrs and the monastic clergy, including the founder of Macau’s Jesuit College. The facade is now buttressed with concrete and steel to prevent any future collapse.
Size: 3879px × 2602px
Location: Ruins of St Paul’s, Santo António, Macau, China.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1600s, 1620-27, 17th, antónio, architecture, arrow, arrows, art, baroque, blade, bones, built, carvings, catholic, century, china, chinese, christian, christianity, church, colonial, colonists, colony, cross-cultural, curved, , death, dei, east, east-west, empire, eye, facade, felled, fusion, granite, grim, heritage, human, impaled, jesuit, kerr, macau, mater, meets, message, mix, mouth, open, oriental, paul, paulo, paul’, people’, portuguese, reaper, religious, republic, roman, ruined, ruins, saint, santo, sculpted, sculptural, sculpture, scythe, sino-portuguese, site, skeletal, skeleton, skull, sockets, st, terence, triumph, unesco, victory, west, world, ã
