The Romanesque fonts of northern Europe and Scandinavia

"By the end of the eleventh century, when Romanesque art first appeared, and by the twelfth when it flourished, every parish church had a font. Increasing prosperity in Europe in the twelfth century was accompanied by the blossoming of the arts in all their forms, and baptismal fonts were often covered in lavish decoration of a high quality, at times producing masterpieces in form and iconography.". "Romanesque art is, above all, religious art, and the sacrament of baptism, being second only to the Eucharist in liturgical importance, is the first in which a Christian takes part. Because of this, almost all the decoration found on fonts is linked to the underlying meaning of the rite, whether directly in the portrayals of relevant stories from the Bible and the lives of saints, or indirectly in the symbolism of the bestiary and of formal motifs such as the vine, the palmette and the fleur de lis. Even the geometric ornament contained at times a symbolic meaning. At the lowest level, the illiterate village craftsmen resorted to a modest vocabulary of enrichment, such as the incised wavy line, the chevron and the rope."--BOOK JACKET.