Varese No. 2 / Baretium

In an essay which gives an architectural synthesis of the baptistery of San Giovanni Battista in Varese, Navoni (2000: 17ff) explains that when the present baptismal font of this church [cf. Index entry for Varese No. 1] was removed and the ground excavated in 1948-1950, a sunken piscina appeared and was subsequently documented. This is, explains Navoni (ibid), the original immersion font of the 6th-7th century, located in the very centre of the baptistery building. When an octagonal stone that half-filled the hole was extracted, what remainde was an octagonal sunken piscina with a central drain hole at the bottom; the piscina has a depth of 75 cm and a diameter of 125 cm. Navoni (ibid.) also notes that a)the original baptistery building had been hexagonal (later replaced by the quadrangular one) and b)that the raised font had not always been located above the sunken one; although it is not known with any certainty where the raised font first was, it is known that ca. 1574 and 1612 it was located against a wall, and it was moved to the centre of the baptistery in 1878-1880. The discovery of the sunken font took place in the excavations of 1948-1950. [Our gratitude to Dr. Paola Viotto Pedroli for bringing these fonts to our attention and for the materials provided]