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Florence Baptistery

11th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in ItalyBaptisteries in ItalyBuildings and structures completed in 1128Catholic baptisteriesIndividual doors
Octagonal churches in ItalyRoman Catholic churches in FlorenceRomanesque architecture in Florence
Baptistery, Florence
Baptistery, Florence

The Florence Baptistery, also known as the Baptistery of Saint John (Italian: Battistero di San Giovanni), is a religious building in Florence, Italy, and has the status of a minor basilica. The octagonal baptistery stands in both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza San Giovanni, across from Florence Cathedral and the Campanile di Giotto. The Baptistery is one of the oldest buildings in the city, constructed between 1059 and 1128 in the Florentine Romanesque style. Although the Florentine style did not spread across Italy as widely as the Pisan Romanesque or Lombard styles, its influence was decisive for the subsequent development of architecture, as it formed the basis from which Francesco Talenti, Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, and other master architects of their time created Renaissance architecture. In the case of the Florentine Romanesque, one can speak of "proto-renaissance", but at the same time an extreme survival of the late antique architectural tradition in Italy, as in the cases of the Basilica of San Salvatore, Spoleto, the Temple of Clitumnus, and the church of Sant'Alessandro in Lucca. The Baptistery is renowned for its three sets of artistically important bronze doors with relief sculptures. The south doors were created by Andrea Pisano and the north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. Michelangelo dubbed the east doors the Gates of Paradise. The Italian poet Dante Alighieri and many other notable Renaissance figures, including members of the Medici family, were baptized in this baptistery.The building contains the monumental tomb of Antipope John XXIII, by Donatello.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Florence Baptistery (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Florence Baptistery
Piazza San Giovanni, Florence Quartiere 1

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N 43.773224 ° E 11.254602 °
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Piazza San Giovanni 17 R
50123 Florence, Quartiere 1
Tuscany, Italy
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Baptistery, Florence
Baptistery, Florence
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Tomb of Antipope John XXIII
Tomb of Antipope John XXIII

The Tomb of Antipope John XXIII is the marble-and-bronze tomb monument of Antipope John XXIII (Baldassare Cossa, c. 1360–1419), created by Donatello and Michelozzo for the Florence Baptistry adjacent to the Duomo. It was commissioned by the executors of Cossa's will after his death on December 22, 1419 and completed during the 1420s, establishing it as one of the early landmarks of Renaissance Florence. According to Ferdinand Gregorovius, the tomb is "at once the sepulchre of the Great Schism in the church and the last papal tomb which is outside Rome itself".Cossa had a long history of cooperation with Florence, which had viewed him as the legitimate pontiff for a time during the Western Schism. The tomb monument is often interpreted as an attempt to strengthen the legitimacy of Cossa's pontificate by linking him to the spiritually powerful site of the Baptistry. The evocation of papal symbolism on the tomb and the linkage between Cossa and Florence have been interpreted as a snub to Cossa's successor Pope Martin V or vicarious "Medici self-promotion", as such a tomb would have been deemed unacceptable for a Florentine citizen.The tomb monument's design included figures of the three Virtues in niches, Cossa's family arms, a gilded bronze recumbent effigy laid out above an inscription-bearing sarcophagus supported on corbel brackets, and above it a Madonna and Child in a half-lunette, with a canopy over all. At the time of its completion, the monument was the tallest sculpture in Florence, and one of very few tombs within the Baptistry or the neighboring Duomo. The tomb monument was the first of several collaborations between Donatello and Michelozzo, and the attribution of its various elements to each of them has been debated by art historians, as have the interpretations of its design and iconography.

Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood
Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood

The Funerary Monument (or Equestrian Monument) to Sir John Hawkwood is a fresco by Paolo Uccello, commemorating English condottiero John Hawkwood, commissioned in 1436 for Florence Cathedral. The fresco is an important example of art commemorating a soldier-for-hire who fought in the Italian peninsula and is a seminal work in the development of perspective. The politics of the commissioning and recommissioning of the fresco have been analyzed and debated by historians. The fresco is often cited as a form of "Florentine propaganda" for its appropriation of a foreign soldier of fortune as a Florentine hero and for its implied promise to other condottieri of the potential rewards of serving Florence. The fresco has also been interpreted as a product of internal political competition between the Albizzi and Medici factions in Renaissance Florence, due to the latter's modification of the work's symbolism and iconography during its recommissioning. The fresco is the oldest extant and authenticated work of Uccello, from a relatively well-known aspect of his career compared to the periods before and after its creation. The fresco has been restored (once in 1524 by Lorenzo di Credi, who added the frame) and is now detached from the wall; it has been repositioned twice in modern times. It is now on the north wall of the nave, beside a similar depiction of fellow condottiero Niccolò da Tolentino (d.1435) by Andrea del Castagno.