Lead Baptismal Font, 13th Century
An Extraordinary Piece from French Gothic Metalwork
Height: 27 cm
Width: 60 cm
Walls are 0,5 cm thick
Width: 60 cm
Walls are 0,5 cm thick
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In this work we present a lead baptismal font of the 13th century, from the southeast of France, whose existence had previously gone unnoticed by specialists. The font was manufactured by a workshop established close to the Occitan town of Toulouse, and specialized in the smelting of this type of lead objects. All of these, except the piece of this study, are kept in their original churches, or in important European or North American museums. Baptismal fonts constitute, in the context of European medieval art, extremely rare objects, of which very few pieces are known.
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