LECTERN. – A piece of furniture designed to support a liturgical book for public reading. It first appeared fixed to the ambo and, like the latter, made of stone. Later, wooden or metal construction prevailed, and the lecterns were placed at the centre of the choir, some on supports with a base almost always triangular, and others inserted into the body of a pedestal-cum-cupboard, known in Florentine terminology as a *badalone*.
The lower part of the pedestal is often hinged to allow storage of choir books, while the upper part sometimes contains drawers. The lectern proper has one or more sloping shelves and is frequently surmounted by a statuette or another ornamental motif of symbolic character. Portable lecterns in brass and wood were also used, with fabric or leather shelves and X-shaped supports. Domestic lecterns took even more varied forms and were often integrated into writing desks or small bookcases. Characteristic of all is the medieval type, which was rotatable, in the shape of a truncated pyramid, with volumes open on the various faces so that the reader could consult them without leaving the desk.
In the late Gothic period, which saw the flourishing in much of Europe of the art of wood carving applied to the construction of church choirs, lecterns of singular beauty appear, notable for their architectural lines and the elegance of their ornamental motifs. Such are the wooden lecterns of the collegiate church of S. Orso in Aosta (with pointed arches and tracery in the French taste) and of the Pinacoteca in Lucca (with exquisite floral inlays). To the early 15th century belong those with eagle figures in bronze or brass from the National Museum in Messina and from the basilica of S. Marco in Venice (the latter featuring an orientalising base with superimposed discs), but the full and classicising taste of the Renaissance was to manifest itself during the 16th century, gradually endowing the lectern with increasingly imposing architectural and decorative developments. Still restrained in Tuscan fashion are the lectern carved for the church of S. Agostino in Perugia, with low polygonal Corinthian orders, and those in the Laurentian Library in Florence, executed by Ciapino and Battista del Cinque; already adorned with Mannerist motifs is the otherwise excellent one in the choir of S. Maria Novella in Florence, designed by Baccio d’Agnolo; richer and more luxuriant is the one in the church of S. Pietro in Perugia, carved, inlaid and sculpted with caryatids, chimaeras, and medallions in relief, until one arrives at the exuberant monumentality of the lectern in the cathedral of Siena, with heavy garlands, by Bartolomeo Neroni, known as il Riccio (1570). In the following period, Baroque forms impressed upon this piece of furniture a character of lavish opulence, accentuating the sculptural motifs, which were then simplified in the course of the 18th century, as seen, for example, in the supremely noble yet simple architectural lecterns of the Madonna della Steccata in Parma, surmounted by elegant vases and an eagle with outstretched wings. Even the portable lecterns of that period, with their undulating and capricious lines, were clothed in the worldly graces of the day, without, however, losing the elegance and agility of their architectural structure. – See pl. LXIX.