(Atlanta-AP) October 26, 2006 - A few days after opening the first exhibit in a three-year partnership with the Louvre in Paris, the High Museum in Atlanta has announced that it will be the first of three stops in the United States for an iconic masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance that has never left Florence.
Three panels from the eastern doors of the Baptistery, called "Gates of Paradise," will be on view starting on April 28th.
The ten bronze panels in the Baptistery eastern doors were created in low relief by Lorenzo Ghiberti in 1425-1452. They have been under restoration for more than 25 years, after being damaged by nearly 600 years of open-air exposure in Florence's cathedral square as well as by the floods that engulfed much of the city in 1966.
They depict pious scenes from the Old Testament. The three that will travel to Atlanta tell the stories of Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, and David and Goliath.
But it's the way Ghiberti made them human that heralded the ideals of the Renaissance. Then, it was man and his real experience in nature - not God and a world of stars and gold - to be was at the center of art.
Gary Radke, a Syracuse University fine arts professor and exhibit curator, says the Renaissance was born with the Baptistery.
In exchange for hosting the exhibit, the High has made a "significant contribution" to the museum of the Florence cathedral, so it can restore an early Renaissance silver altar that was also inside the Baptistery.
After Atlanta, the panels, accompanied by four figurines from the doors' frame, will travel to The Art Institute in Chicago and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before returning to Florence.
Posted 2:33pm by Bryce Mursch
