Barcelona No. 12

Described and illustrated in Art romà... (1999): a former Byzantine capital recycled as holy-water stoup; believed to have been removed from the church of St. Polyeuktos, in Constantinople, in the 13th century and taken to Barcelona; it served as a holy-water stoup in the church of St. Miquel, in Barcelona, until the church was destroyed in 1868; from there it was moved to the church of the Mercè, and finally to the Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya. It is made of marble and is shaped like a vase with a square top; the sides of the abacus have a a deeply carved vegetal (?) motif on the sides and downward-facing heads (?) at the corners; there are flat vertical palm-trunk patterns on the sides that coincide with the angles of the abacus, while the rest is covered in a beautiful deeply-carved foliage motif of holy-like leaves; a ring of lily and medallion motifs adorns the bottom. [We are grateful to Angels Majò Rais and Montserrat Estela, of Barcelona,, Spain, for the photographs of this font]