Travel Italy Exploring Florence About Baptistry in Piazza del Duomo
Travel Italy Exploring Florence About Baptistry in Piazza del Duomo
The Baptistry is the oldest building in Florence, generally thought to date from the sixth or seventh century. Although its mysterious origins lie in the depths of the Dark Ages, no building better illustrates the special relationship between Florence and the Roman world. Throughout the Middle Ages the Florentines chose to believe that the baptistry was originally a Roman temple to Mars, a belief bolstered by the interior's inclusion of Roman granite columns. The pattern of its marble cladding, applied in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is clearly classical in inspiration, and the baptistry's most famous embellishments - its gilded bronze doors - mark the emergence of a self-conscious interest in the art of the ancient world, the birth of the Renaissance.
After Andrea Pisano's success with the south doors in 1336, the merchants' guild held a competition in 1401 for the job of making a new set of doors. The two finalists were Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti - and the latter won the day. Ghiberti's north doors show a new naturalism and classical sense of harmony, but their innovation is timid in comparison with his sublime east doors . These remarkable works of art are these days reverentially dubbed "The Gates of Paradise", supposedly after a remark made by Michelangelo - but, in fact, the area between a baptistry and a cathedral is formally known in Italy as the paradiso . Unprecedented in the subtlety of their modelling, these Old Testament scenes are a primer of early Renaissance art, using perspective, gesture and sophisticated grouping of their subjects to convey the human drama of each scene. Ghiberti has included a self-portrait in the frame of the left-hand door - his is the fourth head from the top of the right-hand band. All the panels now set in the door are replicas, with the originals on display in the Museo dell'Opera
; the original competition entries are in the Bargello
.
You enter through the south doors (Mon-Sat noon-6.30pm, Sun 8.30am-1.30pm; €2.58). Inside, both the semi-abstract mosaic floor and the magnificent mosaic ceiling - including a fearsome platoon of demons at the feet of Christ in judgement - were created in the thirteenth century. To the right of the altar is the tomb of John XXIII , the schismatic pope who died in Florence in 1419 while a guest of his financial adviser and close friend, Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici. The monument, draped by an illusionistic marble canopy, is the work of Donatello and his pupil Michelozzo.
