The evangelists, seated at their lecterns, appear much like canons in a scriptorium, the place where religious scholars wrote manuscripts before the invention of the printing press.
This iconography is frequently found in medieval art—in painting, sculpture, and metalwork.
A notable example is the foot of the Saint-Bertin Cross, created around 1180 by a Mosan workshop, which is part of the collections at the Sandelin Museum in Saint-Omer.
