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| | Giornale Nuovo: Berninis Elephant |
 | | I happened to see a photograph last week - on a weblog somewhere, but I dont remember whose - of the obelisk in Piazza di Minerva in Rome, and of Berninis elephant-statue at its base. |
 | | Bonacci for the link in his comment below which mentions that the inspiration for Berninis design was very likely the above image, one of the woodcuts in Francesco Colonnas Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. |
 | | Also, I never knew that the statue was familiarly known as il pulcino della Minerva, where pulcino, rather bizarrely, means chick (as in baby chicken) - apparently, as the text in the linked page explains, this is a corruption of porcino, in Roman dialect, purcino, meaning, I think, piggy. |
| www.spamula.net /blog/archives/000278.html (319 words) |
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