Gates Of Paradise Unveiled at BYU MOA

As the story goes, when Michelangelo first saw this he was so struck by its brilliance and beauty he said these gates would well be the gates of paradise. We're so excited to unveil this replica of Ghiberti's famous masterpiece from Florence, Italy. These are the doors of the Florence Baptistery that face the Florence Cathedral. During World War II they were taken off to protect them. They decided to make several plaster casts and it is from those that our plaster cast replica was later made. Working on these I feel like I'm working on an wanting to preserve as much of Ghiberti's original hand. Lorenzo Ghiberti was one of the very important early Italian Renaissance artists experimenting with perspective and depth and naturalism from the front figures that are all in high relief to figures in the back that are really low or almost barely carved into the panel. Really thoughtful as he's thinking about how to bring Old Testament scripture to life. Many of the panels were broken and had missing pieces. First time I saw this Aaron's hand was broke off, his head was broken off. We were able to reattach those and this head is Ghiberti. It's almost like he knew his place that was going to be in history, a way of signing this. This project as a whole we've been working on it for almost 10 years. I have right around 11 to 13,000 student hours into the project. To be able to step into history and engage with it and work on these plasters myself was just invaluable. I worked with the plaster, the shellacking, the sizing, applying the gold leaf, oftentimes holding my breath so I don't blow any of the gold leaf away. Ghiberti selected 10 stories from the Old Testament. In the early renaissance not everyone was literate and not everyone had access to scripture so this was the way they learned scripture by having visual images that told those stories. One of the parts that I love the most is right here. Adam is actually being like sculpted from the stone. It is really like Ghiberti making the statement that God is giving man the ability to create. Creation and sculpture and art is a divine gift. These doors are almost 18 feet tall, 10 feet wide. He worked on it for 27 years. I feel like that long process that Ghiberti took has been mimicked a little bit at the museum. We have tried to do honor to Ghiberti's original vision and you get the sense and the same feeling that he wanted you to have when you stand in front of him. You don't have to go to Italy to see these, you know, you can see them right here in Provo. We are very honored to have them here at BYU and they will be part of our permanent collection.