New York Times reports today that
"One of Florence’s Renaissance Prizes to Go on U.S. Tour."
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see several panels of Lorenzo Ghiberti's famous doors
from the Baptistery church in the main plaza in Florence.
I saw the door's modern reproductions installed there in the summer of 2005.
Now, in USA, in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York, we can see original panels in our own
art museums. After the panels tour here, New York Times reports
they will not travel again out of Italy.
Here is their lead, the first few paragraphs:
The early-Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti spent 27 years creating the monumental gilded bronze doors for the eastern portal of the Baptistery in the Piazza del Duomo in Florence. And it has taken teams of conservators just about as long to restore them. [. . . a project that has taken 26 years so far.]Their 10 panels depict scenes from the Old Testament, intricately illustrated in high and low relief. When the three-ton, 20-foot-tall doors were completed, in 1452, Michelangelo pronounced them grand enough to adorn the entrance to paradise, and so they became known as “The Gates of Paradise.”
They have for centuries been considered one of the masterpieces of Western art.
Now three of the newly restored panels are scheduled to tour North America for the first time, traveling to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in April, and then to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
This remarkable opportunity calls for a trip to one the hosting art museums, linked here, in Chicago, or Atlanta, or New York.
Or maybe all three.