Enzo Torcoletti’s sculpture, “Heavenly Bodies,” is a contemporary landmark at the corner of historic Marine and Cadiz Streets. The stone and steel abstract is placed on a pedestal above a sunken garden in front of the St. Augustine Art Association. The sculpture consists of a granite base supporting two vertical white marble slabs, shaped like opposite halves of a female torso. The surface is rough on the sides where the marble appears to have been torn apart. In the space between the marble slabs, there is a small reflective steel sphere. Viewed as a unit, the elements resemble a woman. According to the artist, the sphere may be interpreted as a heart, seed, or the birth of an idea. The work may also be understood as a collision of forces and the formation of a new beginning.

HISTORY

In the modern age, our planet is reeling with information, inventions, and change. Like our forebears, we also yearn for discovery. Torcoletti’s “Heavenly Bodies” is a sculptural metaphor for artistic exploration that was installed in 2015 to commemorate the founding of St. Augustine. This ancient bedrock carving is quite literally an embodiment of Mother Earth reflecting back to us the elegant balance of nature and human existence.

Tens of millions of years ago, Earth’s geological crust cracked. The continents of North and South America drifted away from Europe and Africa, creating what is known as the Old and New Worlds. This separation of land masses lasted so long it had distinct evolutionary effects on each side of the Atlantic ocean. The jaguar that inhabits South America, for example, evolved differently than the leopard, its feline counterpart that roams Africa.

During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Europe was an economic and technological super power beleaguered by wars and religious battles. Rival kingdoms fueled trans-Atlantic expeditions to expand their empires, convert heathens and acquire riches. In 1492, when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers began crossing the Atlantic, the biological separation of the Old and New Worlds was reversed. The resulting co-mingling of plants, animals, and people was called the Columbian Exchange.

From the Old World came advances in architecture, weaponry, and written language along with domesticated livestock, rice, and wheat. In return, Native farming techniques and crops like corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and squash were brought back to Europe…along with shiploads of gold and silver from Mexico and Peru. European and native people shared cultural practices and even intermarried.

But it was the transfer of Old World germs that had the most sweeping impact. Diseases like smallpox, yellow fever, and the plague wiped out native populations from Patagonia to Newfoundland. Many historians argue it was this foreign DNA that led to the successful conquest of the New World.