Lectern (with revised old parts)

The ornate book stand with two slanted sides on a figural post that is adjustable in height was constructed with insect-damaged Renaissance carved elements in combination with nineteenth-century parts. The result is a show item rather than a traditional structure crafted to hold the missal and large books for chanting the Passion.(1) The embellishment includes grotesque masks on the caryatid and in the center of the slanted panels that are framed by stylized sphinx creatures with hooves and scaled tails. Such ornamental vocabulary originating from pagan motifs was abolished by the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545 – 63) and probably not used afterward for important ecclesiastical furnishings.(2) However, the double book cradle offered an appropriate “period” display for decorative volumes and illuminated manuscripts owned by nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectors like Robert Lehman.

Catalogue entry from: Wolfram Koeppe. The Robert Lehman Collection. Decorative Arts, Vol. XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 280.

NOTES:
1. Mershman, Francis. “Lectern.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 9, p. 110. New York, 1910.
2. For some highly embellished works, see Henneberg, Josephine von. “Two Renaissance Cassoni for Cosimo i de’Medici in the Victoria and Albert Museum.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 35, 1991, no. 1, figs. 12, 14 (drawings by Bartolomeo Neroni [1505/15 – 1571], in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City), 17 (lectern in Siena cathedral); see also Massinelli, Anna Maria. Il mobile toscano. Milan, 1993, p. 148, pl. xxx (lectern with sculptural stand in the Certosa, Florence).

Robert Lehman, New York