Rouen No. 3

Enlart (1902) mentions a font-cover in the "musée de Rouen". The font cover is listed in Palissy [ref.: PM76001466]: "16e siècle [...] Provient de l'ancienne église Saint-Etienne des Tonneliers" [NB: since moved to a museum]. The web site of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen [http://mbarouen.fr/en/oeuvres/baptismal-font-cover] [accessed 12 June 2017] describes and illustrates a wooden font cover of the 16th century in its collections [inv. no.: 993.3.1]: "Father Ouf was obviously as active in real life as his dynamic-sounding surname suggests. He was the priest who in the 1880s rehabilitated, restored and rearranged the little church of Saint Romain near Rouen railway station, in particular transferring the cover of the 16th-century baptismal font (which originally came from the church of Saint Etienne des Tonneliers) from the back of the church to the chapel situated to the right of the choir. What a dedicated priest had done, however, could only too easily be undone by a handful of louts, and a hundred years later it seemed far too dangerous to leave this early 16th-century masterpiece in a church where acts of vandalism were becoming increasingly common. The result was that in 1993 it was finally transferred to the city’s art museum. This sculpture is quite simply the only example of its kind among all the works of early Renaissance religious art to be found in Rouen." Jacques Tanguy's site on Saint-Etienne [www.rouen-histoire.com/Eglises_Rouen/St-Etienne_Tonneliers.htm] [accessed 12 June 2017] does not mention the baptismal font here but informs that the Renaissance wooden font cover was moved first to the church of Saint-Romain [in 1802?], and later [1992?] to the museum: "Le couvercle du Baptistère, remarquable œuvre de la Renaissance, a été transporté dans l'église Saint-Romain. Il est maintenant conservé au Musée des Beaux-arts. Il représente différents épisode de la vie et de la passion du Christ." The low-dome shaped wooden font cover is octagonal, with carved panels illustrating scenes of the life of Christ; the tall finial is of two parts: a canopy supported on four moulded baluster-shaped columns houses a sculptured scene [?], while the top of the finial has a pelikan plucking its breast. There is a similar cover -minus the finial- at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London [cf. Index entry for Rouen No. 4].