[LowOiL]

Are we looking at the same picture? There is no image of Jesus in this picture. It is a very narrow shot looking up at a female figure with her right hand grasping the very end of the right crossbeam looking to the right of the photo.

Yes we are looking at two different pictures here. My bad for not specifying more accurately.

This is the picture I was talking about. Blown up about 300%

As I said, one can look at the shadow detail to get a good idea where the statues are located in respect to each other. They both appear to be attached to the cross. The shadows from the building also cast the same direction.

[Quix]

Grossly blasphemous, imho.

[vladimir998]

Gee, I hate to rain on the anti-Catholic parade here, but I’ve been to Rome twice and I’ve seen that particular cross twice. On one side it shows Christ actually hanging on the cross. On the other side it shows Mary cradling the Christ child in her arms standing on a crescent moon. It is clear that the corpus of Christ pre-dates the Mary and baby Jesus figure. The people who put the Mary and baby Jesus figure there did not portray her as nailed to the cross. Instead the simply use the back of the cross as a pole to hold the Mary and baby Jesus sculpture.

Italians, not being poorly educated anti-Catholics who constantly misjudge things - including art, get it. It’s not Mary on the cross. It’s Mary and the baby Jesus on the back of a pole. Christ is on the cross on the other side.

This is almost as bad as when anti-Catholic morons tried to pass off a statue of a Catholic martyr, a woman, who was crucified by her pagan father as a statue showing Mary nailed to the Cross.

[MarkBsnr]

As I said, one can look at the shadow detail to get a good idea where the statues are located in respect to each other. They both appear to be attached to the cross. The shadows from the building also cast the same direction.

This photo appears to show (from the rear diagonal) Jesus hanging on a t-shaped post with fleurs de lis out of the ends. The fleurs de lis are not Italian; they are French. I am unaware of this type of representation of what might be the Cross in some eyes.

On the reverse (a little grainy due to enlargement), appears to be what might be a female figure cradling a small child, with her attention fixed on it. The female figure is less than 2/3 the size of the Jesus on the opposite side and is certainly not crucified. If this is intended to be metaphoric, I'd say that the author might (and I have no idea about this at all) be representing the infancy of Jesus versus His Crucifixion. But I have no information about any of this whatsoever.