London No. 16

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a fragment of a late-12th century baptismal font, described and illustrated in Pope-Hennessy (1964, v.1: 23, and v. 3, fig. 29): "The fragment comprises two sides of a decagonal font, of which the basin was approximately 3 ft. 1 1/2 in. (95.3 cm.) in diameter". Its has been attributed to the Parma and Modena area [this source includes attributions, etc.]. There is a sitting figure in each of the basin sides, a woman to the left and (possibly) a man on the right, who may "represent the labours of Adam and Eve" (ibid.); the figures are inside arches or windows, and there is a band of braided motif above and below them. The fragment was given to the Museum in 1916 by the Architectural Association from the Royal Architectural Museum, Westminster ["Previously in the collection of Mr. E.B. Brice, F.S.A., by whom it was acquired in 1845 at Cowes, Isle of Wight"(ibid.). Also published in Williamson's Catalogue of Romanesque Sculpture, Victoria and Albert Museum (London: 1983: pp. 56-7, cat. no. 25), where the identification of the two figures is suggested as 1)on the left, Eve being tempted by the serpent [the serpent may have been coiled on the separating arch], and 2)on the right, Eve taking the forbidden fruit [but the right arm has been chipped off]. This same Museum source informs of nine 19th-century plaster casts of baptismal fonts held in the Cast Courts at the Museum, among them copies of the magnificent font at Bridekirk. England [cf. Index entry], as well as others from the Statens Historiska Museum of Stockholm.