Aviles / Abilies / Illes / Illias

Standing permission

Results: 8 records

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B01: design element - motifs - foliage

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 July 2010 by Mikel Unanue

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

R01: design element - motifs - moulding

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 July 2010 by Mikel Unanue

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of church exterior - portal

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 July 2010 by Mikel Unanue

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of church exterior - southwest end

Image Source: digital photograph taken 29 May 2007 by Sitomon

Copyright Instructions: Released by the author into the public domain

view of font - upper view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 July 2010 by Mikel Unanue

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of font in context

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 July 2010 by Mikel Unanue

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of font in context

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 July 2010 by Mikel Unanue

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of object

Scene Description: fragment said to be of the pre-Romanesque period, now built into the inner doorway threshold of the cloister

Image Source: digital photograph taken 29 May 2007 by Sitomon

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-3.0

INFORMATION

FontID: 16987AVI

Church/Chapel: Iglesia de San Francisco de Avilés, Parroquia de San Nicolás de Bari

Church Patron Saints: St. Francis of Bari

Country Name: Spain

Location: Asturias, Principado de Asturias

Directions to Site: Located in the old town centre of Aviles

Font Location in Church: Inside the church

Century and Period: 2nd - 3rd century (?) [re-cut], Hispano-Roman [altered]

Cognate Fonts: plaster cast made in 1814 [cf. FontNotes]

Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Mikel Unanue for his photographs of church and font.

Church Notes: The church was originally a Franciscan monastery and was abandoned at the Dissolution [desamortización de Mendizábal]; it then was occupied by the Poor Clares [Clarisas]. in 1850 it became the Iglesia Parroquial de San Nicolás de Bari. To our knowledge, the origin of the font is not documented.

Font Notes: Click to view font notes

Baptismal font made from part of a Corinthian Roman capital [NB: we have no precise date on when the re-cycling of the original stone took place, but it appears it happen ca. 1850 [cf. infra]]. The circular marble basin tapers off to a modern base is black stone, the sides decorated with deeply-carved foliage motifs; the hollowed out inner well is round. the whole has the apearance of a large Corinthian capital. The earliest mention of this object we have found is a speech delivered at the Real Academia of Spain by Aureliano Fernández-Guerra y Orbe in 1865, in which the author writes about an inspectio of the old walls of Aviles by Gonzalez Llanos at the time of their demolition; this inspector declared the wall Roman. Of those walls, continues Fernández-Guerra y Orbe (ibid.), only a beautiful Corinthian marble capital has survived, carved into a baptismal font that was located first at the church of S. Nicolas de Bari and later at S. Francisco's. This author further notes that the original capital had been mounted at the top of a column eight meters tall; a drawing of the capital was made in 1798 by the architect Miguel de la Peña Padura; soon thereafter, in 1814, a plaster (gypsum) cast was made and sent to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S. Fernando, and later deposited in the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura.

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone, marble

Font Shape: round

Basin Interior Shape: round

Basin Exterior Shape: round

Drainage Notes: no lining

REFERENCES

Fernández-Guerra y Orbe, Aureliano, El fuero de Avilés: discurso leído en junta pública de la Real Academia Española, para solemnizar el aniversario de su fundación, [Madrid]: Imprenta Nacional, 1865