Volume 54, Number 17 · November 8, 2007
The Loveliest Doors
By Garry Wills
The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece
Catalog of the exhibition edited by Gary M. Radke, with essays by Andrew Butterfield and eleven other contributors.
an exhibition at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, April 28–July 15, 2007; the Art Institute of Chicago, July 28–October 13, 2007; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 30, 2007–January 13, 2008.
High Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 182 pp., $45.00
The image of Florence that leaps first to mind for modern tourists is probably Brunelleschi's immense dome on the city's cathedral, the Duomo. But the dearest image of the town for Florentines over the centuries has been the smaller octagonal building that stands before the Duomo and serves as its baptistery. This, the most honored and sacred place in the city, is the church of Saint John the Baptist. Dante, who called it mio bel San Giovanni, 'my lovely Saint John's' (Inferno 19.17), was baptized there in 1265.
Review, 4101 words
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