Country Article / Postcards
The Gates of Paradise
Date: 12/26/2004Dear International Living Reader,
You're in Florence, and can't get a reservation for the Uffizi Museum. The long lines waiting to see Michelangelo's David at the Accademia are daunting, and every visitor in town wants to see the Medici's Pitti Palace.
Courage, friends. Across from the Duomo, at Piazza del Duomo 9, is the modern Museo dell'Opera del Duomo--a treasure that hasn't been discovered by throngs of tourists. If you love the Renaissance, you'll love the Museo dell'Opera. Sculptures removed from the Duomo and the Campanile (Giotto's Bell Tower) have found a home here, and so have fragments of a baptismal font mentioned by Dante (Inferno XIX). At the Opera, works by Tedesco and Pisara, as well as Donatello's wooden St. Mary Magdalene, Florentine art from the late 15th century, a bust by Brunelleschi, and cantorie (choir balconies) by Donatello and Luca della Robbia can all be admired at a leisurely pace.
On the second level is an unfinished Pieta by Michelangelo, sculpted when the artist was in his early seventies and originally designed for his own tomb. One of the figures in this sculpture is thought to be endowed with the artist's own features.
The Museo's main attractions, however, are Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze panels, which Michelangelo dubbed the "Gates of Paradise." These panels originally graced the doors of the Bapistry San Giovanni. When the 20-year-old Ghiberti competed against Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Jacopo della Quercia to win his first commission, Florence was sufficiently impressed by his work to grant him the right to sculpt the east doors, opposite the Duomo entrance. Each panel illustrates a scene from the Old Testament and includes Adam and Eve at the creation. Magnificent copies of these panels, currently on the Baptistry's doors, attract hordes of visitors…but here, you can see the originals in peace.
The Museo dell'Opera is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6:50 p.m. from April to October and until 5:20 p.m. November to March. Admission is $6.
Elise Warner
For International Living
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