It isn't Audrey's cute little face, it is a completely different face, but a funny one too, at least in my opinion. The mascaron, this is how we call it, is like a big mask. In Venetian we use the same word to describe the face of a woman who has put far too much make up on to the point that she looks like a mask. The big stone deformed face is positioned on the top of the door of the entrance to the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria Formosa (St. Mary the curvy!). As custom, it is probably here to scare off the devil preventing him from walking up the tower to toll the bell and frighten people. To Ruskin it was, of course, a symbol of the decay of Venice. To me, instead, it looks more like a poor deformed fellow with a funny face looking at me sticking his tongue out!
Left side from the : apples near Rialto bridge, side entrance of the Chiesa
dei Carmini, garden of Palazzo Zenobio. Right side from the top: side of the Chiesa di Santa Maria Formosa, plaque on the wall of a house in Campo near the church of San Pantalon.
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