Photo: Sergey Kelin/istock, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Casts of the original Gates of Paradise are installed on the outside of the Baptistery in Florence. Perfect copies are now at a Kansas City museum.
Victoria Stapley-Brown, at the Art Newspaper, has a nice story about Florence’s famous Gates of Paradise and how a replica landed in Kansas City.
“The original gilded doors were made for the east entrance of the baptistery in front of Florence Cathedral by Ghiberti and his workshop from 1425 to 1452. They depict scenes from the Old Testament and their startling virtuoso relief — figures are placed in landscapes or perspectivally rendered architecture to suggest depth — influenced generations of artists.
When Michelangelo saw them, he said: ‘They are truly worthy to be the Gates of Paradise.’
“Now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, is installing a bronze copy of the famous doors in its entrance hall. …
“In 2015, when the Nelson-Atkins trustee Paul DeBruce and his wife, Linda Woodsmall-DeBruce, were visiting Florence, [they went to] the Marinelli Foundry for the Frilli Gallery.
“The DeBruces discovered that when a copy of the gates was cast at the foundry in 1990 to replace the original doors on the baptistery … another bronze version was made for the Japanese collector Chochiro Motoyama, an importer of Italian luxury goods, who funded the restoration of the original doors and the casting of a replacement.
“The second copy of the doors, which belonged to Motoyama, had been left in storage ever since, apart from appearing in an exhibition in India and South Korea (2013-16).
“The DeBruces bought the copy from the Japanese collector. They transported the gates to New York by ship, then on to Kansas City by train and truck. The 17ft-high doors, which weigh four-and-a-half tonnes, have been hung on the walls of the lobby of the museum’s Bloch Building. …
“The scenes depicted, including the Creation of Adam and Eve, fill ten square panels. To create the illusion of depth and movement, ‘the relief is shallow at the bottom and deeper at the top,’ the museum’s senior curator of European arts, Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, explains in a statement.”
According to the museum’s director, Julián Zugazagoitia, the replica creates a “ ‘nice dialogue and tension’ with a contemporary work in the lobby, a tapestry made from recycled bottle tops by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui.” More.
Don’t you love Art Speak? For artists and museums, the word “tension” is positive. Bless their hearts.
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