Florence’s massive cathedral is the city’s geographical and spiritual heart. Its dome, visible from all over the city, inspired Florentines to do great things.
The church was begun in 1296, in the Gothic style. After generations of work, it was still unfinished. The façade was little more than bare brick, and it stood that way until it was completed in 1870 in the “Neo”-Gothic style. It’s “retro” look captures the feel of the original medieval façade, with green, white, and pink marble sheets that cover the brick construction. You’ll see Gothic (pointed) arches and three stories decorated with mosaics and statues. This over-the-top façade is adored by many, while others call it “the cathedral in pajamas.” The Duomo is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Find her statue right in the center – above the main doorway but below the round window. There is not much to see inside – it is huge, cavernous, and mostly bare inside… not too much that is noteworthy.
I want to focus on the Duomo Museum. This often-overlooked but superbly presented cathedral museum is filled with some of the best sculpture of the Renaissance, including a late Michelangelo pieta’ and statues from the original Baptistery façade. Remarkably, it’s almost never crowded. It also holds Brunelleschi’s models for his dome, Donatello’s emaciated Mary Magdalene and playful choir loft, and Ghiberti’s original bronze Gates of Paradise panels.
In the Hall of Paradise – On one wall, this room re-creates that lower third of the façade we saw on the model. The opposite wall re-creates the Baptistery façade. Both buildings were a showcase of the greatest art of Florence from roughly 1300 to 1600.
The Duomo began life in early medieval times as a humble church overshadowed by the more prestigious Baptistery. By the 1200s, the church wasn’t big enough to contain the exuberant spirit of a city growing rich from the wool trade and banking. So Florence set out to rebuild it, intending to make the finest church of the age.
Facing the façade of the church, as they did in the Middle Ages, are the famous doors of the Baptistery. Here’s your chance to study the original panels. The oldest doors on the left are by Pisano (South Doors, c. 1330). The original competition doors on the right are the first ones done by Ghiberti (North Doors, 1403- 1424). And in the center are the Gates of Paradise by Ghiberti (East Doors, 1425 – 1452.)
These bronze “Gates of Paradise” revolutionized the way Renaissance people saw the world around them. They tell several Old Testament stories using perspective and realism as never before. Ghiberti poured his energy and creativity into these panels. That’s him in the center of the door frame, atop the second row of panels – the head on the left with the shiny-male-pattern baldness.
Armed with new rules of perspective, Ghiberti rendered reality with a mathematical precision revolutionary for the time. To understand how these advances made visual space feel more real than ever before, study the space created by the arches in the Jacob and Esau panel (left side, third from top). At the center is the so-called vanishing point on the distant horizon, where all the arches and floor tiles converge. Those closest to us, at the bottom of the panel, are big and clearly defined. Distant figures are smaller, fuzzier, and higher up. Ghiberti has placed us as part of this casual crowd of holy people – some with their backs to us – milling around an arcade. Suddenly the world has acquired a whole new dimension – depth.
Also on the ground floor are rooms dedicated to the museum’s most famous statues. Donatello’s Mary Magdalene (Santa Maria Maddalena c. 1455) carved from white popular and originally painted with realistic colors, is a Renaissance work of intense devotion .
The aging Michelangelo (1475 – 1564) designed his own tomb, with Pieta (1547 – 1555) as the centerpiece (room 10). Three mourners tend the broken body of the crucified Christ. We see Mary, his mother (the shadowy figure on our right); Mary Magdalene (on the left); and Nicodemus, the converted Pharisee, whose face is that of Michelangelo himself.
Upstairs, the first floor displays original statues and panels from the bell tower’s third story, where copies stand today.
Two marble choir lofts (cantorie; by Lucca della Robbia and Donatello) that once sat above the sacristy doors of the Duomo
and Brunelleschi’s model of the dome.
Don’t miss the Terrazza Brunelleschiana on the third floor – an outdoor terrace with a up-close rooftop view of the Duomo. It was closed during our visit, but I got this picture thru the skylight. 🙂
