Lorenzo Ghiberti was an artist who started out his remarkable sculpting career as a goldsmith in Florence. He won a competition in 1402, at the young age of 24, for the first set of Baptistry doors which took him 22 years to complete. Based on his completion of the first set of doors, he was then commissioned (without having to compete) in 1424, by the Opera del Duomo, to complete the original bronze Doors of Paradise for the Baptistry of San Giovanni. The original doors were made entirely of bronze, took 27 years to complete, and were installed into the East Portal of the Baptistry in 1452. In his admiration of these doors, it was Michaelangelo who gave them their name, many years after they were completed.

Each panel was created one at a time, using the lost wax process. The doors contain ten main panels and a number of border panels. The ten main panels contain stories from the Old Testament. They are the ones of Adam and Eve, Noah and his Family, Jacob and Esau, Moses and his People, David and Goliath, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Joeseph and his Brothers, Joshua and the Promised Land, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. (Reading down the left panel and then down the right panel.)

What makes these doors so astounding, is Ghiberti’s use of perspective (using architectural forms and landscapes to give a sense of space) and graded-relief (embedding the figures into the panel in varying degrees). If you get a chance to see his two sets of doors together, either in Florence, or in two photographs side by side, his growth as an artist, and as a studio master, are evident and you will also see why the Doors of Paradise mark the beginning of the Renaissance.

The Copies

The original doors were taken off of the Baptistry in 1943 and hidden during the Second World War, under the care of a man named Bruno Bearzi. Sr. Bearzi cleaned the doors while they were in his posession and created a gelatin mold of them in the eventuality that a duplicate set could be created.

The doors that now hang on the Baptistry of San Giovanni in Florence are copies made from the same molds as the ones used for the Grace Cathedral (in San Francisco, pictured) doors. There are also copies in a church in upstate New York.

The original doors on the Baptsitry were finally taken down after the flood of 1966 and are kept in the Museo d’Opera del Duomo in Florence.

The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known the world over by its nickname, Il Duomo, is the landmark that ultimately defines the city of Florence. From almost every vantage point within the city, the red dome can be glimpsed.

Designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1296 the construction on the cathedral began that September. By 1418 the church, minus its dome and façade, was completed.

During the years that it took for the cathedral to be completed, it was worked on by a litany of architects, including but not limited to Giotto di Bondone, Andrea Pisano, Francesco Talenti, Giovanni di Lapo Ghini, Alberto Arnoldi, Giovanni d’Ambrogio, Neri di Fioravante and Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo (who was better known as Orcagna).

The Il Duomo complex consists of the cathedral itself, Giotto’s bell tower, and The Baptistry. Il Museo d’Opera del Duomo is a museum run by the church that is housed in a building across the the street from the back of the cathedral. Il Museo holds the statuary taken from the cathedral, including famous works by Donatello (la Maddalena), Michelangelo (Pieta) and di Cambio.

In 1419 it was decided that there would be a competition for the design of the dome that would adorn the church, which would be no small feat. Never in that modern time had a project like this been undertaken. There were a number of contestants for the prize of designing and building the dome, but the main competitors came down to two names, Filippi Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti. Both had competed for the first set of Baptistry Doors in 1402, and it was Ghiberti who had won that competition. Now it was Brunelleschi’s turn to leave a mark on the city of Florence.

After Brunelleschi had lost the 1402 competition for the doors he moved to Rome, where he stayed for fifteen years working as a watchmaker. Perhaps with the thought that the dome in Florence would be commissioned in the near future, he spent some time studying the dome of the Pantheon, the largest in the world at that time whose construction methods and documentation had been lost to history. He kept copious notes of his observations, all in code (which was a normal thing for artisans of the day to do, to be a cryptograher), so that the prized details of his discoveries could be kept to himself.

So, here was the Florentine project: design a self-supporting and free-standing dome on a building without the use of flying buttresses or internal supports and the construction tools to create it. Oh, and don’t forget that it had to be aesthetically beautiful too.

Once the commission of the dome was his, this was the task that Brunelleschi set himself to completing. Brunelleschi’s ingenious design contained a dome within a dome, an inner shell made of a lightweight material, and an outer shell of sturdier weather resistant materials, with a stairway between them. By creating two domes, Brunelleschi solved the problem of weight distribution during construction, and the scaffolding problem – there wasn’t a need for scaffolding – because workers could sit on and work from the inner shell while they built the outer shell of the dome.

Each brick of the dome needed to be aligned in exactly the correct manner for the dome to not cave in on itself. The bricks could not be layered one on top of the other like those in an upright wall. Each layer of bricks would have to be set at an angle that would maintain the necessary curvature and integrity of the dome. As each layer was set, again the slant would have to be redetermined. One of the other ways the bricks in the dome support themselves is in their herringbone pattern – rather than staggering the bricks, the bricks were set one horizontal, one vertical. Brunelleschi spent much of his time designing the bricks and it was rumored that he had personally inspected each and every one that went into the dome.

It took 300 laborers working 140 feet in the air sixteen years to complete the dome. Brunelleschi was so secretive about his work that the workers had no idea how their day-to-day activities were going to result in a finished dome.

Work on the dome started in 1420 and was completed by 1436. The cathedral was consecrated by Pope Eugenius IV on March 25, 1436. The design and construction of its dome is probably the best example of the marriage of art, science, mathematics and engineering ever created.

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)

The Mona Lisa, sometimes also known as La Gioconda (It.) or La Joconde (Fr.), is a woman of mystery. So many myths surround her that the only way to look at her, and to really see her, is to forget them all and just take her for what she is – one of Leonardo da Vinci’s finest paintings.

The Mona Lisa lives in the Museé du Louvre, and the Louvre lives in a palais, a fitting place for such a famous Signora. Tiny placards throughout the maze of hallways in this museum point in the direction of her, creating a kind of scavenger hunt for its most famous painting in residence. Indeed, she is probably the most famous painting in the world.

Once arrived in the painting’s general vicinity, all there is to see, really, are people. People of every shape and size, and every nationality on the planet form a line that snakes through the gallery like Eve’s serpent. Once arrived at the painting, there are only seconds to come face to face with this curious woman before the guard shuffles everyone on to keep the line moving.

The Mona Lisa is a small painting, only 31 inches high and 21 inches wide and is painted in oils on a poplar wood panel – a common painting surface of the time. She was painted by Leonardo between the years of 1503 and 1506 in Florence. DA Vinci’s use of sfumato transcended the painterly convention of the time, as did the angle of the sitter, il contrapposto, along with the bird’s-eye view of the background. It is said that during the years when she was in the possession of Leonardo, he never traveled without her. In 1516, Leonardo brought Mona Lisa to France where he was persuaded to sell her to King François I for 4,000 écus, which was quite a lot of money at the time.

In her history, she has lived in a number of places, including the Château de Fountainbleau, the Château de Versailles and Napolean I’s bedroom in the Palais du Tuileries.

There are three myths that are widely accepted as possibilities for who the Mona Lisa is:

She was Lisa de Gherardini del Giocondo, the 24 year old wife of Francesco
del Giocondo, a wealthy 16th century Florentine silk merchant.

Some believe that she is actually a self-portrait of Leonardo himself,
or that she could possibly be a portrait of his mother, which is why
he would not part with the painting while he was alive.

And there are others that believe she is Isabella of Aragon, who was the
Duchess of Milan in the 16th century.

Famed Leaning Tower of Pisa Standing Next to the Baptistry of the Cathedral by Margaret Bourke-White

The Leaning Tower of Pisa … just hearing its name brings thoughts of gravity-defying joy. Standing at varying degrees of incline for centuries, the tower has been the focus of lore and legend. Built of stone, yet fragile in its existence, this Romanesque tower has capitvated the residents of Pisa, and the world, through time. Other towers in Italy that have collapsed without notice, ones that weren’t even leaning – such as the tower in the Piazza San Marco in Venice in 1902 and the one in Pavia in 1989 – make the tilting tower in Pisa even more fascinating.

The construction of the bell tower of the Santa Maria Maggiore was funded by Berta di Bernardo and began in 1173. No one really knows who designed it. It has been attributed to Guglielmo and Bonanno Pisano. After a few spurts and starts, it was completed two-hundred years later in 1370. At its completion the campanile was already at a 1.6 degree tilt. It was in 1372 that the bell-chamber was finally added. Designed by Tommaso di Andrea Pisano, it brought together the Romanesque attributes of the tower with the Gothic elements of the chamber.

Which falls faster – a feather or a lead ball? From 1589 to 1591 Galileo was a young mathematics professor at the university in Pisa. It was thought that Galileo conducted his legendary experiments on the speed of falling objects from this tower, although the feather and lead ball are only the assumed objects that he dropped over the edge.

Although the Pisans had many reasons for the tilt of the tower, from curses to revenge, the tower was, unforunately, built on top of field that was once a marsh. The soil underneath the tower is made up of sandy deposits and clay silts laid down by the tides of centuries past.

The dropping of the tower in Pavia in 1989 again fed the need and concern to try and correct the tower in Pisa. Or at least stop it from leaning further. By the time the latest studies began in 1990, the tower was leaning 5.5 degrees. Even though there had been no less than sixteen studies through the centuries to study and correct the tower, it had become a now or never situation in the life of the building. It was at this point that it was realized that even a small earthquake or a rise in the water level underneath the tower would bring its demise. Studies were done and plans were made and it was finally decided that to stabilize the tower, which was the option everyone wanted (who would want a straight tower that once leaned?), some of the soil under the north side of the tower would be removed so that the tower could return to the incline it was when measured in 1883.

The Ponte Vecchio was the first bridge to span the Arno, the river that flows through the middle of the city of Florence. It was probably built in the 1st centrury BC by the Romans and has been
swept away a number of times in its history. This current version of the bridge was designed by Taddeo Gaddi and built out of stone in the 14th century to replace the wooden version that was destroyed by the flood of 1333.

The bridge has always had a merchant history and was populated by butcher shops until 1495. On the east side of the bridge a second story was added in 1565. Designed and built by Vasari, the corridor allowed the Medicis to travel back and forth between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti Palace without ever having to touch the ground. (Oh those lofty patrons!) Once Vasari built the ‘secret’ corridor the butchers below were evicted and the more prestigious Florentine goldsmiths were invited to use the bridge shops to sell their wares, which they are still doing to this day.

Throughout the day and throughout the seasons of the year, the personality of the bridge changes. It can be romantic, business-like, historical, touristy, and just a route from here to there. It’s a bridge. And like all bridges that cross bodies of water, one of the nicest things to do is to go into
the middle of the span, rest your arms on the wall, and contemplate the water flowing below.

Photograph: The Ponte Vecchio