LEGGIO. — Furnishing intended to support a liturgical book for public reading. It first appeared fixed upon ambons and, like the latter, made of stone. Later, construction in wood or metal prevailed, and the l. were placed in the center of the choir: some upon supports with an almost always triangular base, others incorporated into the body of a cupboard-like pedestal called, in Florentine terminology, badalone.
The lower part of the pedestal can be opened for storing choir books, while the upper part sometimes has drawers. The lectern proper has one or more sloping planes and is often surmounted by a statuette or another ornamental motif of a symbolic nature. Portable lecterns of brass and wood were also used, with cloth or leather surfaces and x-shaped supports. Domestic lecterns took still more varied forms and often formed part of writing desks or small bookcases. Most characteristic of all is the medieval type: revolving, shaped like a truncated pyramid, with volumes opened on its various faces, which the reader could consult without having to move from the desk.
In the late Gothic period, which saw the art of wood carving applied to the construction of church choirs flourish throughout much of Europe, the wooden l. of the collegiate church of S. Orso in Aosta (with pointed arches and tracery of French taste) and those of the Pinacoteca of Lucca (with exceptionally fine floral inlays) appear as typical and singularly beautiful, both in architectural line and in the grace of their ornamental designs. To the early Quattrocento belong those with eagle figures, in bronze or brass, in the Museo nazionale of Messina and in the basilica of S. Marco in Venice (the latter has an Orientalizing base of superimposed disks); but the full, classicizing taste of the Renaissance was to manifest itself during the 16th century, causing the l. gradually to assume increasingly imposing architectural and decorative developments. Still sober in Tuscan fashion are the carved l. in the church of S. Agostino in Perugia, with a polygonal base in the Corinthian order, and those of the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, executed by Ciapino and Battista del Cinque; already adorned with Mannerist motifs is the otherwise most valuable one in the choir of S. Maria Novella, in Florence, designed by Baccio d'Agnolo; richer and more luxuriant is the other, carved, inlaid, and sculpted with caryatids, chimeras, and relief medallions, in the church of S. Pietro in Perugia, until one reaches the exuberant monumentality of the l. in Siena Cathedral, with heavy festoons, by Bartolomeo Neroni, known as il Riccio (1570). In the subsequent period, Baroque forms impressed this furnishing with a character of sumptuous opulence, accentuating its sculptural motifs, which instead became simplified during the 18th century, as can be seen, for example, in the most noble, yet simple, architectural l. of the Madonna della Steccata in Parma, surmounted by elegant vases and an eagle with outspread wings. The portable lecterns of that period, too, clothed themselves, in their undulating and fanciful lines, in the contemporary worldly graces, without, however, losing the elegance and lightness of their architectural structure. — Vedi tav. LXIX.