Guadalajara No. 3 / El Picazo

Noted and illustrated in the Enciclopedia del románico en Castilla-La Mancha: Guadalajara (2009) as a 13th-century baptismal font originally from El Picazo, near Budia, in the Alcarria; El Picazo became an abandoned village ca. 1983 and the church fell into disuse and ruinous; the font was moved to its present location in 1996. The sandstone font consists of a roughly hemispherical basin decorated with a moulding at the upper rim, and an arcade of round arches the supports of which are actually piping ribs that run all the way down the underbowl; it is raised on a truncated-cone stem, and a quadrangular lower base [NB: the Enciclopedia… (ibid.) describes it as monolithic [“se talló en una sola pieza”] and suggests the fonts at Ablanque, Cifuentes, Henche, Las Inviernas and Olmeda de Cobeta, as being stylistically related to this one.