Saint-Leger nr. Saint-Aubin-des-Préaux / St-Léger

Baptismal font listed in Palissy [ref.: PM50000984]: "Fonts baptismaux [...] Le pied et la cuve sont de forme octogonale, et sont décorés. Quatre anges en buste tiennent une croix, ou bien la tige d'un flambeau muni d'une cavité dans laquelle pouvait peut-être insérer un cierge (la partie supérieure a été mutilée). Ces fonts sont en pierre calcaire présentant des traces de polychromie. [...] Limite 15e siècle 16e siècle (anciennement datée du 15e siècle) [...] H = 180 [...] Emplacement de l’œuvre dans l’édifice: Chevet, retable, derrière". Illustrated in Mémoire [ref.: AP50W01802, AP50W01803, AP50W01804, AP50W02543 and APELR001468]. The wooden lid is flat except with a moulded knob handle that ends in a tiby cross finial [visible in some of the pre-1927 photographs in Mémoire [cf. supra]; the lid is painted blue, green, red and brown. An old chain secures the lid to the basin side. Vivier-Seguin (1941) call this font "parmis les plues élégants de la région" and describe the corner angels of the basin as having a nook in their hands which, in their view, would serve to hold a candle [or is it a scroll?]; they describe the lower base as octagonal with two torus; the lower base is octagonal-to-square, and appears to have an animal at each corner, two of whcih are identified in Vivier-Seguin as a lion and an elephant while, earlier on, Le Héricher "y a vu des diables" [NB: some of these bottom corner figures are damaged and distorted; one is clearly a sejant-gardant lion, a common enough motif on font bases, and the others may well have been the same originally].