Standing in the Piazza del Duomo is one of Florence’s most famous structures, the Baptistery of St. John. Its bright white marble exterior, trimmed in green stone, is unmistakably Florentine. If this city has a beating heart, it would live right here.
Whether you’re drawn by the grandeur, the history or the spiritual power of Florence’s sacred buildings, visiting them is almost a rite of passage. But many people come here and gaze upon these walls without understanding the context behind their construction and artistry. Through this post, I hope to illuminate some of those mysteries and perhaps help you appreciate the Baptistery for more than just its beauty.
Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista
The Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista is one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The structure you see today was long said to have been built between 1059 and 1128, though recent archival research has undermined both of those dates, and scholars now place its construction from the late eleventh century into the twelfth. It is named after St. John the Baptist (San Giovanni Battista), the patron saint of Florence. As Christianity took hold in the old pagan city, tradition holds that the early Christians needed to find ways to make the transition as seamless as possible.
One of these ways, so the story goes, was to replace a Roman god with a Christian saint. Legend has it that St. John took the place of Mars, the god of war, who was said to have watched over the old city. The city needed a saint with similar appeal, and John was a rugged figure, not as seemingly “holy” or clean-cut as some others, which seemed to gel with Florentine sensibilities. Excavations have since found a large Roman house, not a temple, beneath the site, so the legend remains just that.
Florence Artists
The octagonal floor plan was a familiar choice for baptisteries from the earliest days of Christianity, and its eight sides carried meaning: earthly life unfolds in seven-day weeks, while baptism opens onto an “eighth day” beyond measured time. The octagon also has a beautiful sense of symmetry, creating a unified, peaceful design. No records of the construction survive, so nobody knows who designed the structure, but a long roll call of famous names left their mark on it.
Andrea Pisano and Lorenzo Ghiberti cast its bronze doors, Donatello and Michelozzo made the monumental tomb of an antipope, and designs for its mosaics are attributed to Cimabue and Coppo di Marcovaldo. Giotto’s paintings of the Baptist’s life are echoed in Pisano’s door panels, and Leonardo da Vinci’s influence is felt in the sculpture that his friend Francesco Rustici made for the north door. Being a place touched by so many masters’ hands only makes it more critical to the history of the city.
The Baptistery Portals
Alongside the marble, bronze is the material that gives the doorways their lush and regal look. These entrances are called “portals,” and they were the gateways into the palace of God. The doors that hang here today are copies, made between 1990 and 2009; the originals are preserved in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo nearby.
Pisano’s Southern Portal
The oldest set of doors is the work of Andrea Pisano, who began them in 1330 and took six years to finish. They hang on the south side, which is believed to have been the entrance for parents carrying infants to be baptized. The gilded bronze panels tell twenty scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist, with allegorical figures of the virtues below. The Arte di Calimala, the cloth merchants’ guild, commissioned Pisano to make these doors. It was one of the city’s most powerful guilds, with the means to afford such an expensive commission.
Look closely at the panels and notice the significant amount of detail paid to the clothing. It’s tempting to see this as a subtle nod to the guild’s own trade: subtle advertising, if you will. The overall look of these doors is more subdued than the newer ones. The figures are small and less naturalistic, and their emotion is restrained rather than absent. My favourite part of the design is the richly decorated door frames, added more than a century later by the workshop of Ghiberti’s son Vittorio. They are lush with flowers and fruit, and seem almost to be bursting with growth.
Ghiberti’s Northern Portal
The second set of doors, on the north side, was made by Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1403 and 1424. They originally hung on the east side, facing the Cathedral, and moved north when the next set took their place. But Ghiberti wasn’t just hired on the spot, oh no. In 1401 the Arte di Calimala held a competition to decide who would win the honour of this commission, at a time when Florence was still reeling from an outbreak of plague and threatened by war with Milan. Seven sculptors were each asked to submit a small bronze panel showing Abraham sacrificing Isaac.
In the end, according to a biography of Brunelleschi written some eighty years later, the judges were stuck between his design and Ghiberti’s and asked the two to work together. Brunelleschi, the story goes, refused to share the commission. Ghiberti’s own account says the judges chose him outright. Either way, the job went to Ghiberti, and it took him 21 years to complete these doors. There are 28 panels: twenty scenes from the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, set above eight panels of the four Evangelists and four Church Fathers. Each is richly decorated, with the scenes framed by abundant foliage and gilded busts of prophets and sibyls (women able to foretell the future). Though copies, the recreations are nonetheless incredible examples of the sculptural art form that was emerging at the time.
Ghiberti’s Eastern Portal
The third set of doors, made between 1425 and 1452, was also the work of Ghiberti, after his first commission proved such a success. According to Vasari, Michelangelo declared them so beautiful that they might fittingly stand at the gates of Paradise, and the name “Gates of Paradise” stuck, even today. These panels are much larger than the quatrefoil frames of the previous doors. There are only ten in total, each depicting scenes from the Old Testament, from Adam and Eve to the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Ghiberti Artistry
In this new series, Ghiberti used a very shallow relief technique called schiacciato, combined with perspective, to create the illusion of greater depth and movement in each scene. The previous panels were mostly focused on the people in the scene and not the environment. In these new renditions, Ghiberti added landscape and architecture, which brought so much more atmosphere to each panel. Framing the doors are a series of miniature busts and statuettes. Among them are a self-portrait of the artist and a bust traditionally identified as his father, Bartolo.
Above these doors, a sculptural group of three figures shows John the Baptist baptizing Christ, with an angel looking on. The group in place today is a copy.
Baptistery Interior
The interior is wonderfully embellished, and it feels like no matter where you look, there is something magical to behold. This is in stark opposition to the rather austere interior of the Cathedral across the piazza.
Domed Mosaics
The interior takes its inspiration from the Roman Pantheon, and its grand domed ceiling is covered in intricate mosaics in an Italo-Byzantine style. Work is thought to have begun around 1225 and carried on, with interruptions, over several generations into the early fourteenth century. Around ten million tiny tesserae were used, many of them set against a gold ground, to create a vast scene of the Last Judgment. Because the work took so long, you can actually see art styles change across the design as techniques and artists changed. The Last Judgment fills three of the dome’s eight segments; the other five are divided into rings, descending from the lantern, each depicting a different storyline.
A note for your visit: the vault is in the middle of a major restoration, expected to run until 2028, so scaffolding may partly obscure the ceiling.
Life of Joseph, the Virgin Mary and Jesus and St. John the Baptist
The topmost ring, beneath the lantern, is decorated with plants. Below it comes a ring of angels in their ranked choirs, followed by scenes from the book of Genesis. Next come images from the life of Joseph, then the lives of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, and finally the life of St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence.
In the three segments above the altar, Christ presides over the Last Judgment, a towering figure some six metres high. He sits with his hands held out to either side. From where you stand, damnation lies to the right of his feet and salvation to the left. Hell, much of it designed by Coppo di Marcovaldo, is terrifying: a rocky landscape of fire where devils torment the damned, some of them roasted on spits. The devils are not human at all and look almost alien, as if hell itself mutates the human form. The message to medieval Florentines was clear: be good in life, or suffer for eternity.
The Marble Floor
After looking up for so long, give your neck a break and take a look at the ground. The marble floor is made using a technique called intarsia, in which many colours of marble are carefully fitted together to form one unified piece. Legend has it that light from the opening at the top of the dome once fell on a sundial set into this floor, and that Florentine designers used the astrological signs, along with the sundial, to tell the time. Scholars now think that unlikely, but the zodiac signs in the marble can still be seen on the floor today.
The Tomb of Guccio de Medici
In a niche beside the altar, a sarcophagus is believed to hold the remains of Guccio de’ Medici, who served as Gonfaloniere of Justice in 1299. It is a fourth-century Roman sarcophagus carved with a hunting scene, later fitted with a cover bearing the Medici emblem, and it was brought here in 1928 from the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. It is a modest affair next to the monument that follows.
The Tomb of the Anti Pope
One of the most controversial tombs in the Baptistery belongs to Antipope John XXIII, born Baldassarre Cossa. A Neapolitan nobleman, he became a cardinal and then, in 1410, pope, but the Council of Constance deposed him in 1415, while he was still alive, and he is counted as an antipope today. The Florentines, though, stood by him: the Republic ransomed him from captivity in 1419, an effort orchestrated by Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici. The Medici had good reason to be grateful. As pope, Cossa had made the Medici bank the depository-general of the papal finances. Handling papal money was a huge opportunity, and it helped carry the Medici from just another Florentine banking house toward the wealth and power that would make them one of Europe’s most famous dynasties.
Donatello and the Baptistry
When he died in December 1419, his executors, among them Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, claimed he had wished to be buried in the Baptistery, and a place was found for him there. Burial in the Baptistery was a considerable honour, perhaps beyond Cossa’s station, and the Calimala guild, which looked after the building, at first approved only a “small and inconspicuous” monument. The tomb that followed was anything but. Donatello and Michelozzo created it during the 1420s, and at the time of its completion it was the tallest sculpture in Florence.
A gilded bronze effigy of Cossa lies on a bier, and some scholars think Donatello worked from a death mask. Rather than gazing at the sky, the face turns toward the onlooker, almost daring the public to say a word against him, as though he were still watching and listening. Above the coffin is a lunette of the Madonna and Child, and a canopy of gilded drapery covers the whole piece. Two lions support the bier on either side, and they may be modelled on the Marzocco, Florence’s heraldic lion.
If Florence has a beating heart, it still beats here, behind these white and green walls. Now that you know the stories in the marble, bronze and gold (a saint who may have replaced a god, a rivalry played out over a small bronze panel, an antipope’s tomb that was meant to be small and inconspicuous), I hope you’ll see the Baptistery as more than just a beautiful building.
There is so much more to see around the Baptistery, so once you’re finished here, be sure to head over to tour the famous Duomo! If you’ve visited the Baptistery in Florence, let me know in the comments what your favourite part was!
Happy travels, adventurers.
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