Baptising the Putto: Transmigration of Infantile Forms in Sacred Settings between the Adriatic and the Alps

The image of the putto is a widely popular pathosformel in Renaissance visual culture. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, sculpted child figures appear in both monumental and liturgical contexts, serving a range of functions. This essay explores the migration of an iconographic and formal motif: baptismal fonts and holy water stoups supported by putti. Especially prominent along the Adriatic coast and the Alpine arc, this motif has drawn scholarly attention for its stylistic diffusion. The invention—or rather re-invention—of the sacred water basin held by putti, inspired by classical antiquity, has recently been attributed to the workshop of Filippo and Andrea da Carona. Active in Venice and later in Lombardy, Liguria, Parma, and Friuli in the 1430s–1440s, they are known for fonts in San Giovanni in Bragora (Venice, c.1430) and for Cardinal Branda Castiglione in Castiglione Olona (1435). The motif flourished in Dalmatia, particularly in the early 1440s through Giorgio Dalmata, who designed the high-quality sculptural font and Gothic baptistery in Šibenik Cathedral. It continued with the classical-style baptistery in Trogir Cathedral by Andrea Alessi and Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino. A late echo appears in the mid-16th-century collegiate church of Mola di Bari (Apulia), where Dalmatian craftsmen fused Romanesque and early Dalmatian Renaissance styles in a font supported by putti. A second cluster of such liturgical furnishings appears in Friuli, with around twenty known examples stemming from the 1466 font in Spilimbergo Cathedral. These works also show influences from Ticino and Venice. The Christian adaptation of an ancient motif—both in the childlike form and the broader theme of a basin held by human figures—raises aesthetic, liturgical, and emotional questions. Drawing from Dempsey’s concepts, this study proposes an analysis that considers both the function of the putto and its emotional resonance in an era marked by high infant mortality. Moreover, the motif's regional development in the Alpe-Adria area suggests a deeper, localized cultural significance.