Kneeler

KNEELER. - A piece of furniture consisting of a step on which to kneel, a lectern and, often, one or more drawers in which to keep prayer books. In the history of furniture, the kneeler naturally underwent the transformations that the taste of the times gradually imposed.

Simple at first, like the 16th-century kneeler in the cathedral of Perugia, with two twisted little columns at the sides and a carved door simulating three drawers, it became more complex already in the same 16th century, like the one formerly in the Gozzadini collection with a canopy adorned with inlays by Biagio De Marchi (Bologna 1539), and, even more so, the one in the Casa Coronini at Gorizia (16th century), rich in carvings and crowned by a kind of architectural model of an altar. In the 17th-18th centuries the Baroque taste is present also in kneelers, and one recalls that of the Palazzo Doria in Genoa with the lectern in the shape of a cushion supported by a little angel; the one in walnut inlaid with engraved ivory (work of P. Piffetti around the middle of the 18th century) in the Royal Palace of Turin, and the beautiful "pregadio" (from the French "prie-Dieu"), also in the Royal Palace of Turin, which Charles Emmanuel III ordered in 1732 from the inlayer Luigi Prinotto. In the 19th and 20th centuries the kneeler has generally taken on forms of bare simplicity.

As regards the law and the liturgical use of the kneeler for patrons and civil dignitaries who attend sacred functions, see the entry: BANCO IN CHIESA. - See plate CXXIII.