Florence Baptistery to be closed until mid-December for restoration of dome mosaics

The restoration of the eight interior walls of the Florence Baptistery, which began in 2017 and was interrupted several times due to the Covid-19 pandemic, has been completed. However, the Baptistery will remain closed to the public from today until December 18, 2022, in order to safely carry out a special construction site that will allow the restoration of the approximately 1,200 square meters of mosaics in the dome.

This is a construction site, the cost of which will be borne entirely by theOpera di Santa Maria del Fiore, and will also allow visitors to see this masterpiece up close in the future.

Themosaics of the Baptistery’sdome were begun, according to the date inscribed in the scarsella, in 1225. In all likelihood they were made by resorting to mosaicists who came from outside and to furnaces already active elsewhere, specializing in the preparation of polychrome glass for mosaic tesserae.

Soon the Florentine painters and craftsmen were able to gain full autonomy, and by the end of the century the more than 1,000 square meters of the dome had been covered with the mosaic robe, which on either side of the grandiose scene of the Last Judgment narrates on four registers the Stories of Genesis, of Joseph the Jew, of Christ, and of the Baptist. Several generations of artists, including Cimabue himself, followed one another on the scaffolding to create a spectacular anthology of the art, pictorial and mosaic at once, of the Florentine thirteenth century, of which the vault of the scarsella, whose mosaics were made while work was still being done on those of the dome, is also a part.

Pictured is the Florence Baptistery after restoration of the interior walls. Photo by Fabio Muzzi. Courtesy of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Florence Baptistery to be closed until mid-December for restoration of dome mosaics

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