Santa Maria la Nueva, Zamora (Zamora, Spain)


As at
La Seu d'Urgell, Luxuria is represented by a Mermaid in an acrobatic posture, but here she has a huge hole between her legs.
This carving is on the left-hand side of the doorway to one of new fewer than 21 Romanesque churches in the town.


Compare first with ancient Luristan bronzes,
then with a more subtle French mermaid at Saint-Côme (Aveyron), whose folded tails form a vulvic mandorla...


photo by Jacques Martin


...and with a rare tongue-sticking mermaid at Courpière (Puy-de-Dôme)...


photo by Joël Jalladeau


...and with this ambiguous example from Milan.