Tuscany is a hot, swinging place. If you were to be poking around the medieval piazze of Massa Marittima, you might come across a frescoed fountain. The fresco, made reasonably brilliant from restoration in recent times, is a harmonious composition featuring a huge tree and women below, reaching for the fruit of said tree.
How quaint, I hear you whisper, ever so softly.
Look at the tree closely though, and your puritan hackles are in danger of being raised up. The tree bears phalluses. Lots of them. Big, too.
I like the medieval, especially around the 12th and 13th centuries, when pilgrimage was rampant and sexual carvings were being hammered out in droves inside Romanesque churches along the routes. It’s so not the stuff of the 21st century.
In any case, folks close to the mural want the tree of phalluses to represent a pagan wish for fecundity, a desire that isn’t passing through the modern population of Italy like wildfire for sure. It is likely to have politics attached to it, as explained in Negative Campaigning, Medieval Style, which also has a great picture of the fresco.
And if you want to sit back and hear about Massa Marittima’s phallus tree, here’s an NPR report
Unusual fruit indeed.