Among the three doors of the outside of the Baptistery the most beautiful is the famous Gate of Paradise, a golden door made by Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452. Instead of dividing the door in twenty panels, as the other two doors, he decided to divide it into only ten panels, describing more than one story of the Old Testament for each panel. The surface is all covered by thin golden leaf, even if the door we can see outside the Baptistery is only a copy, while the original one is inside the Museum of the Opera del Duomo for conservative reasons. It is worth a visit, because it has been restored since few months after twenty-seven years of restoration and it shines so much that the surface of the copy seems dirty in comparison.
As we get inside, the first thing we notice is the beautiful dome covered by precious mosaics. It is one of the biggest dome of the world decorated by mosaics! On the so-called tessere, the small cards the mosaic is done with, there is a thin leaf of gold, so the dome is so shining and so awesome.
The mosaics were designed by Florentines artists, such as Cimabue or Coppo di Marcovaldo, but Florence didn’t have a tradition of mosaics, so artists from Venice were called to realize the decoration of the dome, and they did it between 1270 and 1340.
The Gate of Paradise
(source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/gates-of-paradise)
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