Noordeloos

A communication from Joost Limburg (e-mail of 25 June 2015 to BSI) notes: "font in Noordeloos [...] Ligtenberg and Drake don't mention it. The only "official" reference I found is on the Monumenten van Nederland pages, stating the font is early 16th century gothic [...] I can't help wondering if the font, or rather the basin, is older [...] the basin and the base don't look as if they originally belonged to each other. The base is clearly gothic though [...] the 4 faces are very simple - almost schematic - and more or less the same, like on most Romanesque fonts of the same type". The font in question is illustrated in a series of photographs in the Netherlanad's Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed site [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nederlands_Hervormde_Kerk,_Noordeloos] [accessed 27 June 2015], photographs that show adisused basin in poor state of preservation in 1962, restored by 1968 and mounted on a base which had been supporting the pulpit in 1962. The basin is round with four human heads at 90-degree angles on the upper basin sides, with framed panels in between; it showed much damage inside and out in 1962 but was restored by 1968; it is not possible to discern the shape of the underbowl in the 1962 images, but it may have been different from its present shape, which is octagonal. By 1968 it had been restored and mounted on a base formerly used beneath the puplit; the base is octagonal at the top, with multiple mouldings down the sides, the lower base octagonal-to-square; in 1962 it was completely covered in whitewash, but was cleaned up in the restoration, showing now that the stone is the same type of grey-blue Mosan limestone as that of the basin; this base is Gothic, likely of the late-15th or 16th century, whereas the heads and the framed panels of the basin suggest a late-12th century. A communication from Pol Herman (e-mail of 30 July 2022) adds: "The 17th century pulpit of Noordeloos was standing on the (painted) base of a baptismal font. This was a very late gothic (maybe renaissance) Mosan font. In 1966, the base was taken out from under the pulpit, the paint was removed. And the basin was installed on it. However : this is an early gothic basin, with many Romanesque features. If you look closely at the picture, you will see that the pulpit was installed on the late gothic base, that rested on the early gothic basin that was sunk into the floor."