Salvador Brazil

"The Two Christs," carved and painted wood ©2001 photo Elroy Christenson

This particular church has several parts. Two large sanctuaries are used for religious worship with traditional elaborately carved and guilded altars. There are at least two smaller chapels, an education room and a museum upstairs with an assortment of remarkable religious memorabilia.  Like Bonfim, this church is used by the Candomblistas who respect the saints included here. One large room in the complex of the buildings has several life size carved and painted statues of different saints showing graphically the pain and suffering that they endured in great detail, right down to the spurting blood created with red streaming fabric.  In a small adjoining chapel these two Christs lay almost like mirrors to each other, the larger one being in front of the smaller one.   They have been carved from wood and painted very emotionally yellow.  This fits in with the Counter Reformation belief espoused in the 1600's to magnify and illustrate these mystical scenes of pain and suffering for the illiterate.