Could the Vatican not have done without this gleaming sphere by Arnaldo Pomodoro?

The so-called sculpture was installed back in the 1990s, under John Paul II, which does nothing to mitigate its ugliness. It looks more like some trinket from a metallurgical industry exhibition than a work of art worthy of the Vatican court.

However, what matters here is not the immediate aesthetic component but the meaning with which this enigmatic statue is charged. A terrestrial globe, cut through entirely by concealed mechanisms, at the foundation of which lies another, hidden world that governs those mechanisms. If that is the rationale, then such an Easter egg certainly belongs in the very centre of the Vatican.

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Could the Vatican not have done without this gleaming sphere by Arnaldo Pomodoro?

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

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Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s