Great Balls of Fire!

There’s always a first time for everything and for the first time in my life I had trouble with my balls! Yes, this very unusual church in Memmelsdorf in Franconia has great balls of fire on the architrave and I struggled to get my balls in proportion! 

Too large, too small not quite in the right place ....... what a load of balls! The church itself is unusual too, what with a Baroque facade at the front and a gothic looking tower off centre at the rear. It is known that there was a chapel here from the 1100 then in 1300 enlarged only to be largely destroyed in the 30 Year War, after that altered and rebuilt in its present form.

Now they're what I call balls! The statues are copies of originals made by the local sculptor Ferdinand Dietz who also created the 420 statues for the local  Bishop Prince palace, Schloss Seehof and where the some of the originals from the church are on display and Dietz found his final resting place in the church yard here. I always wonder if craftsmen, artists or sculptors ever imagined people looking at their work hundreds of years later or whether Dietz imagined he would be staring at his works for the rest of eternity.

Flames are often associated with the Holy Spirit, but after a lot of googling I still couldn’t find the symbolism behind these burning balls, so I'll be searching on. I wish I'd remembered to bring some money with me so I could have popped into the local inn for a cooling beer, sketching can be thirsty work, especially when you’ve struggled with your balls!