All the great names of Florentine sculpture worked in the Duomo.
The museum contains several heroic prophets by Donatello which
once stood on Giotto's campanile. The two Cantorie (organ lofts
or singing galleries) by Donatello and Luca della Robbia, with
their riotous groups of children singing and making music, are
exceptionally charming. On the landing stands Michelangelo's
late Pieta, designed for his own tomb. It is, perhaps, the most
moving sculpture in Florence. When the work fell below the sculptor's
impossibly high standards, he smashed it with a hammer; it was
never finished (Christ only has one leg). The figure of Nicodemus
may be a self-portrait. The last room upstairs holds Ghiberti's
second and far more complex set of bronze doors for the Baptistery,
nick-named by Michelangelo 'the Gates of Paradise'.
All the great names of Florentine sculpture worked in the Duomo.
The museum contains several heroic prophets by Donatello which
once stood on Giotto's campanile. The two Cantorie (organ lofts
or singing galleries) by Donatello and Luca della Robbia, with
their riotous groups of children singing and making music, are
exceptionally charming. On the landing stands Michelangelo's
late Pieta, designed for his own tomb. It is, perhaps, the most
moving sculpture in Florence. When the work fell below the sculptor's
impossibly high standards, he smashed it with a hammer; it was
never finished (Christ only has one leg). The figure of Nicodemus
may be a self-portrait. The last room upstairs holds Ghiberti's
second and far more complex set of bronze doors for the Baptistery,
nick-named by Michelangelo 'the Gates of Paradise'.