Valadares nr Baião

Noted and illustrated in SIPA [IPA.00004840] [www.monumentos.pt/Site/APP_PagesUser/SIPA.aspx?id=4840] [accessed 1 June 2014] as a baptismal font made of granite located beneath the west gallery, a roughly hemispherical basin with a protruding upper rim, raised on a round-to-square pedestal base, a broad roll moulding atop, and zoomorphic motifs at 90-degree angles at the bottom [="No lado do Evangelho, no sub-coro e elevada por um degrau de cantaria, pia batismal em cantaria de granito, composta por pequena coluna, assente em pé em toro, ornado por elementos zoomórficos nos ângulos, e por taça hemisférica e de bordo levemente saliente"]. The SIPA source above does not mention the ball and other motifs below the rim, nor the fact that the font appears to be a composite object of ill-matched parts. The very weathered basin must have been exposed to the elements for a very long time to have been so eroded. There is an indentation on the basin side for the font cover lock, but both the lock and cover are missing; there is however one old metal staple still in the upper rim. The motifs identified in SIPA [cf. supra] as zoomorphic are now very eroded for identification, and resemble spurs instead.