Bunschoten No. 2 / Bunschooten / Bunschoots / Bunsjoten

Ortt van Schonauen (1858: 150) reports an old baptismal font of bluish Namur stone found near the Roskam inn, at the north end of Bunschoten, a font said to be originally from the parish church here; the basin is missing a good part of the sides, so it looks like a chair, whereas the base and one side remain. The damaged object is also noted and illustrated in Verslagen Omtrent 's Rijks Oude Archieven XI (1888). The Inventory list of the church by the Rijksdienst voor de Monumentzorg, 1978 includes a baptismal font (on the north side of the baptismal fence), height 87 cm, width 48.5 cm, made of Bentheimer sandstone [Pol Herman's comment: this is wrong] in the late fifteenth century. The base is square and turns into an octagon by chamfering of the corners. The top of the foot transitions to a columnar middle section, via convex and concave profiling. Above it is the chalice-shaped, octagonal basin of the baptismal font with concave and convex profiling below the flat rim. The bowl of the baptismal font is a hollowed-out hemisphere. From the church but later found in the garden of a private house. Condition : a piece has broken off on one side, completed with cement addition. Then the entire font was coloured with a grey grout. This will be undone under the supervision of Monumentenzorg [NB: this reference information supplied by Pol Herman]. A further communication from Pol Herman to BSI (e-mail of 24 January 2022) provided information on this object wich, Pol Herman argues, was actually a holy-water stoup, not a font. Pol Herman informs of his exchanges with local historian Arie ter Beek in April 2021, who wrote [English translation]: "For decades, a part of the baptismal font stood at a former inn in the Dorpsstraat. A part because a piece of the 'bowl' had broken off. Chiselled heads were no longer attached to it at all. In 1976 it was restored and, incidentally without the heads, it was put back into use as a baptismal font." Pol Herman, however, argues that a pair of heads located in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden at Leiden, which Arie ter Beek believed had been cut off the disused font, are not related to this object at all, but that they were part of a much earlier Romanesque font from Bunschoten church [cf. BSI entry for Bunschoten No. 1]: "When I see the baptismal font at Bunschoten, I do not have the impression that it ever carried heads. The look of the font is that of a 15th century, gothic, Mosan, holy water stoop. It is possible that the heavy restoration of the damaged basin has hidden the traces of the chopped-off heads. However, the style of the Romanesque head in the museum does not fit the preserved basin at all. Therefore, I conclude that there originally were two objects: 1) a Romanesque baptismal font with 4 heads, lost and only 1 head remaining, and 2) a Gothic stoup without heads, now used as font". Pol Herman's argument and identification accounts for the late date of the former stoup, now used as font inside the church, and for the two heads in the museum [cf. supra].