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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue439" data-source="post: 824397" data-attributes="member: 53455">Learning to photograph smaller objects (and even very small ones, like signet rings or belt buckles) is part of the lover of old stones’ toil.Grézieu-la-Varenne is an unremarkable town in the suburbs of Lyon (southeastern France), with an utterly unremarkable church built in the late 1870s. Thanks to my Lyonnais et Savoie romans book by Zodiaque, I was alerted to the presence in that church of a sculpted basin, probably a stoup, that was worth seeing. So, I drove over one day and discovered this splendid piece of soft white stone (like a sort of alabaster), coming from the previous church that was razed in 1870 to make way for the ugliness we have to behold today.Several errors have been made about this piece. First, it is described locally (and on the web) as “a baptismal font, originally”, which is obviously wrong: because during the Middle Ages, baptism was a major affair that often implied full (or substantial) immersion of the body, and because that sacrament was not generally bestowed upon infants, that sculpted basin wouldn’t have fitted the body of any being but an infant. It is simply too small to have been used for baptism in those distant times. My opinion is that it was designed for the use that’s been its own through the centuries: as a stoup!Second, it is in general dated from the beginning of the 11th century. However, the manner in which it is sculpted (in particular the shape of the hands and the length of the fingers), as well as the themes developed, lead me to believe it is a lot older than Year 1000, and more typical of Carolingian sculpture. I would vouch it was made around 850.It is a truly beautiful piece, which is, of course, set in a very dark church where it suffers from ugly, impossible lighting. I should have brought flashes, had I known, because I cannot show all the aspects of the object: one side was decidedly too dark to be photographed. Maybe, one day, I will go back with a couple of speedlights to properly light and photograph this unique piece.Nikon Z7, Micro-Nikkor 45mm, ƒ/2.8 PC-E tilt-shift lens. Hitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.[ATTACH=full]410560[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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