Volume 54, Number 20 · December 20, 2007
The Gates of Paradise
By Garry Wills
In response to The Loveliest Doors (November 8, 2007)
To the editors:
Three statements in my review of the Ghiberti exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum [NYR, November 8] require correction. First, the reliefs on the doors at the Baptistery are not in lead, but in a copper alloy, either bronze or brass (as the fifteenth- century documents suggest). Second, the panels to be placed back in the original frame were restored, not regilded. And finally Ghiberti wrote his autobiography about ten years after the models of the doors were completed; the doors themselves were finished later. My thanks to Andrew Butterfield, Gary M. Radke, and the other readers who pointed out these errors.
Garry Wills
Evanston, Illinois
