Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T02:05:40.618Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Ceramic Plaque Representing a Part of the Moses Panel by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the East Baptistery Doors (Florence, Italy)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Pamela B. Vandiver*
Affiliation:
[email protected], University of Arizona, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering,, Program in Heritage Conservation Science, and Department of Anthropology, Tucson, AZ, 85721, United States, 520-400-2270, 520-621-8059
Get access

Abstract

A ceramic plaque was studied that depicts the figurative part of the lower half of the Moses Panel from the gilt bronze doors that Lorenzo Ghiberti and his workshop installed on the east side of the San Giovanni Baptistery in Florence, Italy. The doors were completed in 1452, and thermoluminescence dating of two areas of the ceramic relief panel gave a broad, but consistent fifteenth century date. No differences were found in the composition, microstructure or phase assemblage of the two stylistically distinct parts of the ceramic panel. Microscopy and radiography were used to reconstruct the forming methods and sequence of steps in manufacture and restoration.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Vasari, G., Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. G. du C. de Vere, Knopf, A.A., New York, 1996, 294ff.Google Scholar
2. Ghiberti, , Lorenzo, , Commentarii, I, ed. Bartoli, L., Giunti, , Florence, , 1998, 97. Marquand, A., “A Terracotta Sketch by Lorenzo Ghiberti,” Am. Jour. of Archaeology, 9 (1984) 206-211.Google Scholar
3. Krautheimer, R., Lorenzo Ghiberti, Princeton Univ. Press, 1956, p. 191.Google Scholar
4. Radke, G.M., ed., The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007.Google Scholar
5. Shepard, , Anna, O., Ceramics for the Archaeologist, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C., No. 609, 1954, pp. 183193.Google Scholar
6. Radke, G.M., “Lorenzo Ghiberti: Master Collaborator,” in Radke, G.M., The Gates of Paradise, op. cit., pp. 5171.Google Scholar
7. Haines, M. and Caglioti, F., “Documenting the Gates of Paradise,” Ibid., p. 8384, 93.Google Scholar
8. Rees-Jones, S., “A Fifteenth Century Florentine Terracotta Relief: Technology, Conservation, Interpretation,” Studies in Conservation, 23/3 (1978) 95113.Google Scholar
9. Bewer, F.G., “Studying the Technology of Renaissance Bronzes,” Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology IV, eds., Vandiver, P., Druzik, J., Galvan, J-L., Freestone, I.C. and Wheeler, G.S, MRS Symp. Proc. 352, 1995, p. 701709.Google Scholar