Lillo / San Miguel de Lillo

Described in Alvarez Martínez (1999: 265) as one in a group of barrel-shaped fonts dated to the 9th-11th century of the same design type as the later font originally from the church of San Pedro in Villanueva now kept at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. Described and illustrated in García de Castro (1995: 241-242) as a cylindrical font probably of the early church and therefore dated to the 9th century. This author is reluctant to identify the fragment now [ca. 1995] at Lillo with the original font and provides the supporting documentation to his thesis that the fragment currently at Lillo is actually what is left of the baptismal font from nearby Santa Maria de Naranco. One of these documents is a ca. 1908 photograph in the Archivo MAS [negative C 25 435] in which the image matches a later photograph in Selgas Albuerne's "Arte pre-románico asturiano" (Madrid: Polígrafa, 1967); both photographs show the same font, the latter clearly identifying a fragment located outside the church, right of the western entrance (pl. 62 on p,. 157). The fragment identified in these two images is not, according to GdeC the fragment found now at San Miguel de Lillo, which lacks the flat moulding clearly visible in the original Lillo font. [cf. Index entry for Naranco for information on the surviving fragment]