KNEELING STOOL. - A piece of furniture consisting of a step on which one kneels, a reading desk, and often one or more drawers for storing prayer books. In the history of furniture, the kneeling stool naturally undergoes the transformations that the changing tastes of the times progressively imposed.
Initially simple, as in the 16th-century kneeling stool in the cathedral of Perugia, with two spiral columns at the sides and a carved front simulating three drawers, it became more complex even within the same 16th century, such as the one formerly in the Gozzadini collection with a canopy adorned with marquetry by Biagio De Marchi (Bologna 1539), and, even more so, the one at Casa Coronini in Gorizia (16th century), richly carved and crowned by a kind of architectural model of an altar. In the 17th–18th centuries, the Baroque taste is also evident in kneeling stools, such as the one in Palazzo Doria in Genoa with a reading desk shaped like a cushion supported by a little angel; the one in walnut inlaid with engraved ivory (a work by P. Piffetti around the mid-18th century) in the Royal Palace of Turin; and the fine "prie-dieu" (from the French "prie-Dieu"), also in the Royal Palace of Turin, which Charles Emmanuel III commissioned in 1732 from the cabinetmaker Luigi Prinotto. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the kneeling stool generally assumed forms of stark simplicity.
Regarding the legal and liturgical use of the kneeling stool for patrons and civil dignitaries attending sacred functions, see the entry: BANCO IN CHIESA. - V. tav. CXXIII.