Figure of a fountain: deer

This limestone deer was discovered in several fragments on the site of the old Sainte-Croix convent in Poitiers. There is still some question of where its exact placement would have been. It may have formed part of the later construction of the neighbouring baptistery, as that of Latran where a figure of a deer filled the basin with water. According to J.-R. Gaborit, however, judging from its material, it was more likely to have been part of an outdoor fountain. It could also have belonged to the cloister or been placed in the outbuildings of the Sainte-Croix convent.

Its iconographic treatment and style recall the famous bronze deer carved in the 10th century found at Madinat al-Zahra, a caliphal city constructed by the Umuyyads of Córdoba, deer that undoubtedly formed an ensemble of twelve animals around a basin. They were designed to have the water rise up through their hollow limbs and spout out of their open jaws. We see the same rigid silhouette, a square-sectioned head with flattened sides, an almond-shaped eye and ears lying flat, pointing backwards. The shape of the deer in Poitiers is nevertheless much larger and its treatment more rustic. Certain comparable objects which were brought back among the spoils of the earls of Poitiers—who played a decisive role in the first military expeditions in Muslim Spain—may have served as models for local sculptors.

The choice of the deer spouting water from a fountain was not an arbitrary choice considering the deer’s connection to the natural element of water in a famous legend, known in certain Eastern and Western traditions. So it was that an ageing deer that was losing its vigour and sharp vision filled its mouth with water and went to spill it over a snake’s lair. Soon the snake, which was half dead, began to twist and turn at the deer’s feet and the deer seized it. But just then a devouring flame began to rise up from the depths of its entrails. Burned by the sting of the venom and panting with unbearable thirst, it ran off through the woods and didn’t stop until it found a spring where it quenched its thirst and hid in the underbrush. Then it saw that its old antlers had fallen and its fur was transformed. When it came out of hiding, it had regained its vigour, its sharp vision and its youth; it had acquired a new life. This legend has many echoes in Eastern and Western writings by such authors as Al-Kasvini and Damir, but also Guillaume de Champeaux, Hugues de Saint-Victor, Gilbert Foliot and Vincent de Beauvais. As to the antagonism between the animals, Western authors simply transposed the behaviour of Eastern animals that were close in species; the animal in Persia was the pausen. The Masdeans see in the dual between the pausen and the snake the allegorical image of the victorious struggle of the good, Ormuzd, against evil, Ahriman. And similarly, in Christian writings, the triumph of the deer over the reptile symbolises the victory of the Saviour over the forces of darkness. In medieval bestiary, the deer came to represent Christ chasing away demons, its wisdom symbolised by the water. The water that spills forth becomes an allegory of the victorious Words of the Saviour, the word of God.