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Summary of these posts so far:

• The first three posts in this series provided some general information for travel: answers to questions I wish I’d known enough to ask before I went to Italy. The first, on planning, packing, and flights, is here. The second, on car rentals and driving in Italy, is here. The third is on Italian restaurants and the hotel we stayed at, here.
• The Academy, visiting museums in general, and trains to Florence, here.
• Florence’s Cathedral, a.k.a. the Duomo, markets in Florence, restrooms, and footwork, here.

This week: the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the museum attached to Florence’s Cathedral (a.k.a. the Duomo or Santa Maria dei Fiori), with brief comments on the Baptistery and the Campanile. The Grande Museo del Duomo ticket gives you access to all these, as well as the dome of the Cathedral. Access to the Cathedral itself is free: see last week’s post.

Museo dell’Opera del Duomo

The Opera del Duomo (“works of the cathedral”) is the official entity that once built and now takes care of the Cathedral. Every Italian town that has a cathedral has an Opera del Duomo as well. The Opera never throws anything away, which means their museums are fabulous, with art and artifacts that are much earlier than the current cathedrals.

Side note: in mosaic pavements, in stone inscriptions, and elsewhere, “opera” is often abbreviated to “opa” with a bar on the descender of the “p”. That’s an abbreviation from medieval Latin. And they said my Ph.D. in paleography would never come in useful!

Here are some highlights of Florence’s Museo dell’Opera.

Model of the Cathedral’s earlier facade

The Cathedral’s current façade, with its green and white stripes, looks like one that would have been built in the Middle Ages (see Florence’s Santa Croce and the Cathedral of Siena), but it was in fact added in the 19^th century.

The Museo dell’ Opera has a full-size mock-up of the façade as it appeared earlier, with the original sculptures set up in their places.

One of those original sculptures is Donatello’s St. John Evangelist. Its placement on the model allows you to see how Donatello elongated the torso so that it would seem to have correct proportions when viewed from below. Donatello is amazing because he thinks of details like that, after centuries when sculptors routinely copied what others had done before them. Adjusting St. John’s proportions is one many ways Donatello revolutionized sculpture. (See Innovators in Sculpture, Ch. 8.)

The photos I took that show this sculpture from the correct angle (i.e., from below) are among the hundreds that I lost when my computer’s hard drive crashed (see here). Back up your photos!

Baptistery doors

The Museo dell’Opera has the originals of all 3 pairs doors from the Baptistery, by Andrea Pisano (14^th c.) and Ghiberti (15^th c.). The ones now on the Baptistery are reproductions.

Donatello’s Mary Magdalene

Donatello’s wooden Mary Magdalene is eerie, because although the figure is gaunt and the clothing is ragged, you can see her former beauty in the elegant hands. No sculptor had ever produced anything like this. I visited every Donatello sculpture I could find while in Florence, because as I said above, he never, ever simply repeats what others have done – or even what he’s done himself. More on that in Innovators in Sculpture, Ch. 8.

Singing galleries

The Museo has two cantorias that used to be in the Cathedral, one by Donatello, one by Luca della Robbia. These are balconies where singers could stand above the crowds in the cathedral, to be heard better.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo’s Deposition is at the Museo dell’Opera. It’s a pieta with Michelangelo’s face on the standing figure. Like most late Michelangelo works, it’s rather gloomy, but like all Michelangelo works, it’s worth seeing. More on it here.

Moving on from the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo …

Baptistery & Campanile

The Baptistery is older than the Cathedral. It was built from 1059 to 1128 , and has stunning gilt mosaics inside its dome. The bell tower (campanile) next to it was designed by Giotto, who’s another one of those jaw-droppingly original Italian artists. He’s better known for painting than for architecture. I didn’t have time to visit either the Campanile or the Baptistery on this trip, but they’re on my list for the next one.

Next week: the Uffizi, Italy’s most visited museum.

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