New Still Life Arrangements

Crucifix with chicken feet and pig casings.

I've added several new arrangements to my Still gallery.  Probably my favourite is the image above.  For whatever reason the arrangement reminds me of Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi,  a nun and Christian mystic who would be canonized as a saint some years after her death, in the late 1600s.  I've always been fascinated by de Pazzi, whose self-flagellation and nail-lined corsets suggest something more like masochism than religious ecstasy.  The Wiki page on de Pazzi contains this delightful quote about her death, from Armando Favazza's Bodies Under Siege:

At about age 37, emaciated and racked with coughing and pain, she took to her bed until she died four years later. Her painful gums were so badly infected that her teeth fell out, one by one. Her body was covered with putrefying bed sores, but when the sisters offered to move her she warned them off for fear that by touching her body they might experience sexual desires... A large statue of her holding a flagellant whip can be seen in her church in Florence, where people around the world still come to pay her tribute.

Enjoy!

Book bound in sheep stomach with dead flowers and sheep stomach lampshade.

Dead flower with chicken feet and cow tongue.