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Lorenzo Ghiberti worked for twenty-seven years on his masterpiece, “The Gates of Paradise” a pair of bronze doors for the San Giovanni Baptistery in Florence, Italy. Now, after more than twenty-five years of work at Florence’s Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the restoration of Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise is nearing completion. The doors consist of ten panels (approximately 32" x 32") and numerous frieze elements bordering the panels. The panels, ordered from left to right and top to bottom, feature a sequence of scenes from the Old Testament are crafted in relief. The scenes depicted in the ten panels are as follows: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, Abraham, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon.
The photo above shows the installation of the kiosks on either side of the reading nook adjacent to the exhibit.
Three of the ten gilt bronze panels (Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, and David), along with a pair of figures and two decorative heads from the surrounding framework are touring the United States. The exhibition will be on view at the organizing institution, the High Museum of Art from April 28 – July 15, 2007 and will continue to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then the door panels and other individual elements will be reintegrated into their original frame and permanently displayed in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence—near their original home at the Baptistery—never to travel again.
Installed kiosk with 40-inch
monitor mounted vertically,
enclosure built by the High
Museum, and user controls
mounted in enclosure:
zoom in/out buttons on left,
trackball in center and
Select button on right.
In order to show visitors the other panels of the doors, the High Museum of Art contracted The Interactive Media Technology Center (IMTC) to design and build an interactive application that would tell the stories in each panel and allow the visitor to zoom to explore the panels in greater detail. IMTC worked closely with the High to achieve a system that would meet the High's standards for design and function. As installed at the High Museum, two identical systems frame the reading nook for The Gates of Paradise exhibit. Each kiosk installation consists of a portrait-oriented 40” LCD screen and a control panel including a trackball, select button and zoom buttons, on a pedestal.
In the program, the visitor may select a panel from the door, tour the stories in that the panel and explore further using high-resolution details of the panels highlighting Ghiberti’s techniques, the restoration process, or other interesting information about the panel. The interactive program will join the panels on their tour in the United States before they return to Italy.
The program will join the panels on tour in the United States before they return to Italy. The panels will then be reinserted into the door frames and sealed in a case in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, where they will likely remain permanently.
Screenshots
click on a thumbnail below for a larger view (JPG: 640 x 480)
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images from the Ghiberti: The Gates of Paradise exhibition at the High Museum of Art
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