Collaborative Agreement Reached Between Florentine Cultural Agencies and ARTstor

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.