A visit to the Baptistery or “the scaffolding Gremlin strikes again”

So, before we totally leave the Duomo, though we will be back, I do have a one of more fresco that I think will be of interest.

I cannot do this justice but hell is in the lower left of the painting (Left, in Italian, being the word “sinistra” (from which the word “sinister” is derived) morphing into seven levels of Heaven in the center and the City of Florence in the right hand portion of the painting with Dante, holding the Divine Comedy, in the center. There is some more symbolism regarding the sky but I do not remember what our guide said so google it if interested :-). Another interesting fact about the Divine Comedy, the play, is that it was written in common Italian, not Latin, thus it was considered a breakthrough in that it: 1. Basically established the Florentine dialect of Italian as common Italian rather than many of the dialects spoken elsewhere in the country; and 2. By writing in the common Italian language, rather than Latin, the work was available to be read by the common person rather than just the religious or scholarly classes. See, I was listening, it just fades in and out LOL.

The Baptistery of San Giovanni (St. John after John the Baptist) is an interesting structure of which I did not get to truly experience because of the fact that the frescos in the ceiling, ostensibly truly a site to behold, were under netting being cleaned and restored. Of course! Why should this year be any different? In ’17 it was there cathedral in Santiago de Compostela that was being restored and in ’21 it was the cathedral in Canterbury as well as Big Ben in London. If I worked as a painter or hanging drywall I am sure I would be truly in awe of the intricacies of these scaffolding structures but I’m not though by this point it has become a running joke for me.

I would recommend going to the site http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/Baptistery_of_florence.html

to gain an in depth knowledge of the Baptistery and its construction as there is way too much detail and nuance for me to come even close to doing it justice.

One item that I have not been able to establish with clarity is how often the Baptistery was used, our guide said only on Easter Sunday, or one day a year, another source said eight days during Holy Week, that, in the Christian calendar, extends from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday and then another source says that it was used daily. There is probably a time period associated with each but I’ll be switched if I can find the chronology.

I do know that parents with the infant to be Baptized and godparents entered through the north door and exited through the Eastern Door known as the “Doors to Paradise”. This was the name given to the Lorenzo Ghiberti designed and bronze cast panels by Michelangelo. This was saying something as Michelangelo was not considered to be a very nice person and typically thought that anything not created by him was substandard.  The door is a ten panel bronze casting in relief depicting certain moments from the Bible.

This is a big door, my guess is roughly fifteen feet tall of cast bronze. The door is now housed in the Duomo Museum after a bad flood struck Florence in 1966 with the Arno River breaching its banks and reaching all the way to the Duomo and Baptistery…no small feat as they are both about on half mile from the river!

The above is the sarcophagus of Antipope John the 23rd….not that John the 23rd. Apparently, back in Church history there was a time where there were multiple popes, the one that was elected from the princes of the Church (college of Cardinals), the pope and then others who claimed to be pope or Antipopes. At the time of Antipope John the 23, there were three, The Pope in Rome, an Antipope in Avignon France and the Antipope shown above in Florence. Why the multiple claims? I have no clue. But, I am sure that somewhere there is a definitive dissertation on the whys and wherefores thereof. 🙂

The following is a series of images from within the Baptistery. It is not my intent to cut my commentary short, in fact you you are experiencing this pretty much as I did. After a certain point the guide was talking, but, it was so much information in so little time that, I was only absorbing the highlights.

Eventually we will move on from the Duomo complex but we are not there yet. Next post is the Duomo museum so strap in 🙂