This finely crafted Gothic Revival baptismal font, preserved in the parish church of Saint-Georges in Villentrois (Indre), exemplifies the renewed enthusiasm for medieval forms that characterized ecclesiastical furnishings across rural central France during the Second Empire. Carved from pale local limestone, the font consists of a circular basin raised on a cylindrical shaft with a moulded base and a leafy capital, its profile harmonizing with the restrained Gothic architecture of the church interior.

The octagonal bowl is encircled by blind panels of trefoil and quatrefoil tracery, recalling the decorative vocabulary of late Gothic sculpture once found in the great churches of Berry and Touraine. Here, however, the carving is rendered with the measured precision and regularity typical of the 19th century, suggesting production by a regional workshop active in the Châteauroux–Bourges area, where numerous neo-Gothic commissions were undertaken for diocesan restorations.

Surmounting the stone basin is a domed brass cover crowned with a Latin cross, a detail reflecting the taste for metallic finishes promoted by ecclesiastical designers under the influence of Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration theories. The interplay of the warm limestone surface with the polished brass lid lends the piece a quiet dignity, perfectly suited to the modest but coherent interior of Saint-Georges.

The font was most likely installed during the mid-19th-century restoration campaigns that transformed many parish churches in the Indre. Its form and ornament demonstrate both piety and pride in local craftsmanship: the delicate vine and leaf motif of the capital echoes medieval carving while remaining unmistakably of its time, disciplined and symmetrical.

Though inspired by authentic Gothic precedent, the crisp tooling and industrially produced brasswork clearly identify the Villentrois font as a neo-Gothic reinterpretation, not a medieval survival. Yet it fulfills the same spiritual and ceremonial function as its predecessors, standing near the west end of the nave as a symbol of rebirth through baptism.

Today, the baptismal font of Saint-Georges, Villentrois, remains in situ, its pale surface softened by time and use but still displaying the precision of its 19th-century workmanship. It endures as both a devotional object and a testament to the persistence of Gothic form in the sacred art of provincial France.