The twelfth-century enameled medallion shows a winged personification of Fides (faith)—one of the three Christian virtues alongside Caritas (love, caring) and Spes (hope). The inscription “FIDES BAPTISMVS” does not refer to the personification depicted, but to its attribute, the baptismal font. On her wavy hair she wears a white cap enameled in red on the upper edge with red decorative ribbons. A halo surrounds her head. The linear depiction of the figure in the Byzantine pictorial tradition emphasizes her gesture, which is pointing to a baptismal font. Her green cloak and the red holy water shine with great luminosity and stand out against the decoration in shades of blue on the gilded surface of the copper support.
The precious medallion is a fragment of a former altarpiece (retable) in the former monastery church of the Benedictine imperial abbey of Stablo (Stavelot) in present-day Belgium. The retable, probably one of the most important Maasland metal works of the twelfth century, was commissioned around 1150 by the founder, Abbot Wibald of Stablo and Corvey, in honor of Saint Remaclus, the abbot-bishop who founded the abbey in 648. The altarpiece was probably almost completely destroyed in a church fire in 1701. In addition to the medallion, its counterpart “OPERATIO” (Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin) and two inscriptions (Collegiate Church, Stavelot) are among the only surviving remnants of the altarpiece. A drawing of the Remaclus retable from 1661-1666 (now in the Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels) reveals the significance of the medallion as part of a complex theological pictorial design. Here, the two medallions “Fides Baptism” (left) and “Operatio” (right) framed a larger one with a dove representing the Holy Spirit. Their motifs emphasized the sacraments of baptism and anointing for the salvation of every believer.