Of Bulls' Balls and Babes' Boobs

I recently took a wonderful trip from Paris to Italy, to meet some old friends in a tiny little town in the Cinque Terre called Riomaggiore. On the way, I had just a few moments in the main train station in Milan, Milano Centrale. Building began in 1864 but was not finished until 1931. You can read about it here.

While there, I was intrigued by the mosaics on the walls and floor and took some photos. This evening I spent two hours trying to learn something about them but could find nothing online. So, I'll just upload the photos and you can enjoy them too.

The first photo is the signature under the mosaic of three lovely mermaids. I tried to use "mosaici di padoan venezia" as a search term for information on Google but got nowhere.

The next photo is a detail of one of the mermaids. I was enchanted by her. Not only her loveliness but also the downright swirliness of her boobs. There should be a law. Or somebody should show me where I can buy that dress. One or the other.

The third photo is a detail of a bull on the floor of the train station. I read about a more famous bull floor mosaic that is in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which is close to the train station but I didn't have time to go there. At the famous bull mosaic, people spin with their heel on the bull's testicles for luck, or to guarantee that they will return to Milan.

Of course, in my photo, I focused on his horns, not his balls. Silly me. What was I thinking? But not a big surprise. I'm kind of attracted to them thar pointy things.

I observed no tourists spinning on their heals down near this bull's nether regions, so hopefully, his poor balls have yet to be ground to smithereens.