#baptismal font

The fantastic creatures carved on this fragment of a medieval baptismal font in Glencairn’s collection may have been intended to ward off evil during the ceremony of baptism. According to Dr. Julia Perratore, “medieval baptismal fonts were frequently endowed with an extra layer of spiritual protection in the form of apotropaic imagery. Romanesque fonts in particular tend to display images of frightening monsters and violent confrontations between beasts (or humans and beasts) because physical struggle was seen as an appropriate metaphor for the vanquishing of evil through baptism.” Read more about this and other “monsters” in Glencairn in “Protective Images from Glencairn’s Medieval Sculpture Collection,” a 2017 article in Glencairn Museum News:https://bit.ly/3axZ0gj