Opposite that sculpture at the south end, we find another half-capital, this one by Pietro di Martino and his workshop. It depicts Apollo's servant Aesculapius, the father of medicine, shown here sitting an apothecary. (By the way, Dubrovnik during its golden age had free health care from salaried physicians.) From Milan, Martino lived here for 20 years starting in 1432. This is the only original sculpture to survive the explosion that damaged the Onofrio building in its original position on the building. (A few other fragments have been moved to the interior.) The myth of Aesculapius (whose symbol is typically the two snakes wound around his stave) has a remote connection to Dubrovnik in that the city's original name was Epidauros -- and Aesculapius originated from a town in Greece with the same name. That's a bit of a stretch, but the iconography of this building suggests Dubrovnik's place in history just as the carvings on cathedrals bathe their towns in the great flow of Christian myths.
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