"Alert and looking toward each other, both lions jealously protect their prey—a lamb in one case and a calf in the other—beneath massive paws. The pair originally supported columns that would have been attached to their backs and probably flanked a small doorway of a church. By the mid-eighteenth century, they were placed at the door of a chapel near the village of Quattro Castella, near Reggio Emilia."  The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 53.64.1