attributed to Renier or a follower by many. Style and origin The figures on the font are in very high relief, and have a remarkable classicism of style; so much so that it has also been suggested that it was in fact made in Constantinople, or by Greeks in Rome about 1000. Other explanations attribute the classicism to close Byzantine influence, though as Honour and Fleming point out, "In bodily proportions, poses, gestures and garments, they recall Classical models far beyond Byzantine, Carolingian, or even Early Christian art"; they suggest the artist might have seen ancient Greek sculptures in Constantinople when on the First Crusade. Other writers explain the style as emerging from older Mosan and Carolingian traditions, with recent Byzantine influence, and prefiguring Gothic figure style. The idealized figures are modelled in rounded forms; several nude figures are present, and one is seen from behind in a three-quarters view, a sophisticated classical pose. Art-historical argument over the origin of the font has been vigorous and sometimes acrimonious, and in recent decades mostly conducted in French. In support of the Byzantine origin theory, analysis of the lead in 1993 has shown that it came from mines in Spain or Sardinia, whereas other Mosan works used locally sourced metal. Pierre Colman and his wife Berthe Lhoist-Colman have developed a "Roman" theory, according to which the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III commissioned the font from Greek craftsmen in Rome in about 1000, as a gift for the Basilica of Saint John Lateran there. Decades later it was carried off by Henry IV or Henry V to the Meuse. However most art historians continue to accept the traditional Mosan attribution, and relate the style to the other works mentioned above. Description The basin is across at the top, tapering slightly towards the base, and is variously described as of brass or bronze. It was made by lost wax casting, with the basin cast in a single piece; the size was not necessarily exceptional, as both church bells and cauldrons for large households were probably cast at comparable sizes; some church doors cast in a single piece, though flat, were much larger. The font sat on twelve oxen (two are now missing), who emerged from a stone plinth, a reference to the "molten sea... on twelve oxen" cast in bronze for Solomon's temple The five scenes shown, identified by Latin inscriptions ("tituli") on the