New York No. 2 / Wellen? / St-Trond?

Described and illustrated in Randall (1962), who informs that "the Museum acquired from the Joseph Brummer Collection a font […] attributed to Tournai [..] The font is carved of a dark gray and very hard limestone called calcite, of a type quarried in the twelfth century between Dinant and Huy." Randall notes the Namur-group fonts of Lesquielles St.-Germain, Chereng and Archennes as fonts that "have many features in common with that of the Cloisters font." Randall (ibid.) suggests a date ca. 1200 for the font. Described and illustrated in Wixom (1989): "This massive baptismal font was made in the late twelfth century in the region between Maastricht and Tongres in the valley of the Meuse River, near the border between Belgium and Holland. Four large-eyed, powerful heads with sweeping moustaches project beyond a series of blind arcades resting on columns that encircle the font. Raised above these arcades is a second series supported on animal-head corbels, a scheme that recalls the late twelfth-century exterior of the ambulatory of Saint Servatius at Maastricht and the early thirteenth-century cloister at Tongres. The styles of the projecting heads has been compared to the head from a font in Maastricht that is sometimes attributed to the Heimo workshop of the late twelfth-century and to a head in a relief at Maastricht with the oath of allegience to Frederick II (1194-1250). A Maastricht stone pilaster with Saint James carved about 1200 --now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam-- has a especially similar physiognomy. The original base for The Cloisters font is missing. The projecting would have had the visual if not actual support of subsidiary colonnettes, with the whole base set on a square plinth." (Wixom, 1989). Hartog (2002) notes the similarity of a small head from a Maastricht-area baptismal font [now in the Bonnefanten collection in Maastricht] with those on The Cloisters' font; Hartog suggests the Bonnefanten head may belong to the Maastricht Heimo workshop as well. Ghislain (2009) identifies this font with the one photographed by a local photographer, Achille Thys in 1922, in the 'klooster' at Saint Trond, "the old Redemptorist monastery in Saint-Trond was the most renowned in the city". Ghislain (ibid.) writes of an August 1922 receipt of a "sale of the baptistery, 2,300 francs (approximately 2,680 euros" discovered in "the archives of the Redemptorists". Ghislain (ibid.) notes that the 1922 sale of this font had already been 'deplored" by J. de Borgrave d'Altena (1933: 8). The record for this font in the Metropolitan Museum [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/471263] [accessed 13 November 2022] notes "This large font is central to the legend of a holy woman named Christina (1150–1224), whose story was recorded by Thomas of Cantimpré, a famous thirteenth-century Dominican author. Troubled by an evil spirit as she passed the village church in Wellen, Christina reputedly jumped into this font. She emerged from the water having achieved newfound exemplary behavior and thereafter was known as Christina the Astonishing. Stone baptismal fonts from the Meuse Valley were exported throughout northern Europe. The four projecting heads on this example, each slightly different from the other, probably represent the Four Rivers of Paradise", and has further information on this object. A card identifying the item and its provenance from Captain Lambert's collection (Belgium) bears the date of sale to the Metropolitan Museum as 9 July 1949; in a communication from Pol Herman (e-mail of 27 July 2022) Ghislain identifies this item as a font originally from Wellen [cf. ImagesArea]