Collaborative Agreement Reached Between Florentine Cultural

ARTstor is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with the
Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and the Museo Opificio delle Pietre Dure
(Florence, Italy). Through this agreement, ARTstor is supporting the
rich photographic documentation of the recently restored bronze doors on
the east side of the Florentine Baptistery, universally known as the
"Gates of Paradise" (in Italian, "Porta del Paradiso"). The sculptural
relief panels of the "Gates of Paradise," produced during the second
quarter of the fifteenth century by the great Florentine sculptor
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), constitute one of the most important art
works of the early Italian Renaissance. After more than twenty-five
years of work, the restoration of Ghiberti's famous "Gates of Paradise"
is nearing completion. ARTstor is sponsoring the comprehensive
photographic documentation of the Gates of Paradise in their newly
restored state. This photographic campaign has produced nearly 700
stunning, detailed photographs of Ghiberti's relief sculptures, all of
which will be digitized and made available through ARTstor at the
highest resolution.

"These splendid new photos finally allow Ghiberti's work to be seen and
studied as the three-dimensional, sculptural masterpieces they are,"
according to Gary M. Radke, Professor of Fine Arts at Syracuse
University and Curator for Exhibitions of Italian Art at the High Museum
of Art, Atlanta. "Never before have we been able to study Ghiberti's
works so clearly and in such exhaustive detail. Taken from a wide
variety of angles and under lighting conditions that reveal the full
subtlety of Ghiberti's modeling and finishing, these images will
transform thinking about Ghiberti for decades to come."

The contents of this important archive will greatly enrich ARTstor's
value to a wide audience in the history of art and related fields,
including especially students of Italian Renaissance art. In reaching
this agreement, James Shulman, Executive Director of ARTstor, said, "The
'Gates of Paradise' are among the most glorious works of Italian
Renaissance art, and the recent restoration of Ghiberti's famous relief
panels is one of the crowning achievements of scientific art
conservation. ARTstor is delighted to be able to play a part in
supporting this important work through rich, new photographic
documentation, and we are equally pleased to make these stunning new
images available to scholars, teachers, and students. We anticipate that
our partnership with the relevant Italian authorities - the Opera di
Santa Maria del Fiore, Opificio delle Pietre Dure, and other Florentine
cultural agencies - will lead to many further collaborations with
Italian museums."

The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore was founded by the Florentine
Republic in 1296 to oversee the construction of the new Cathedral and
its bell tower. Since 1436, the year in which Filippo Brunelleschi's
famous cupola was completed and the Cathedral consecrated, the principal
charge of the Opera has been to conserve the entire monumental complex.
In 1777 it was further assigned responsibility for the Florentine
Baptistery and in 1891 for the museum which had been created to house
works of art that, over the years, had to be removed from the Cathedral
and the Baptistery.

The Opificio delle Pietre Dure is an autonomous Institute of the
Florentine Ministry for Cultural Heritage, whose operational, research
and training activities find expression in the field of conservation of
works of art. It is the seat of one of the Italian state conservation
schools, of a museum displaying samples of its artistic semiprecious
stone production, a scientific laboratory for diagnostics and research,
a highly specialised library in the sphere of conservation, extremely
rich archives documenting conservation projects, a research centre and a
public climatology service. It is one of the largest institutions in
Europe in this field, having at its disposal an interdisciplinary team
of conservators, art historians, archaeologists, architects, scientific
experts and documentalists.