Some Venetian Graffitti.

This is a fifteenth century carving of a man in a turban running through the streets holding a heart. It has a BRILLIANT story attached to it. I will recount.

"A Venetian lady had a baby by a Turkish Jew. The baby boy grew up with his father and dressed in Turkish fashion but often visited his adoring mother. Being half Venetian and half Jewish, the boy was an outcast from both communities and so struggled to find an identity. This caused him to develop a seriously violent temper and he regularly beat his mother, who always forgave him out of endless maternal love.
One evening, in a surge of rage, he completely lost control of himself and stabbed his mother repeatedly before tearing her heart from her chest. On realising what he had done, he was stricken with horror and ran off through the streets still clasping the bleeding heart in his fist. He reached the bridge next to the hospital, tripped on the first step and the heart flew out of his hands. Legend has it that the heart uttered the words, "Have you hurt yourself, my son?" [WHAT??!!!!] The son then ran off, threw himself in the lagoon and drowned.
The whole scene unfolded in front of an old stone cutter and it made such an awful impression on him that he scratched the image of the young Turkish man holding his mother's heart on the nearest wall."


Bloody marvellous.