CERVO

CERVO. — The biblical image of Ps 41, “sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum,” has been rendered in early Christian art by the depiction of stags drinking at a spring, symbolizing souls hastening to the source of life.
This motif is most often chosen for baptisteries (Salona, Sens), but it also appears in catacomb paintings (Wilpert, Pitture, tavv. CL, 3; CCLXIX), in Christian sarcophagi (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, V. indice), in the African silver casket discovered at ‘Ajn Bejdá’ and now in the Vatican Library’s Museo Sacro, and even on a medal. Stags were also placed in baptisteries, with water flowing from their mouths into the font; the Liber Pontificalis records seven silver stags in the Lateran baptistery and a silver stag in the baptistery of the title of Vestina. At Carthage, the stag appears on Christian terracotta lamps and on a lead seal.