Baptistry of San Giovanni

Description

With a height of 54.86 meters, and 34.13 meters in diameter, it is the largest baptistery in Italy. The Pisa Baptistery is an example of the stylistic transition in the course of 200 years from the Romanesque to the Gothic idiom. Begun in the mid-12th century by its first architect Diotisalvi in the Romanesque style, with round arches and rather simple figural decoration, while the upper sections are in the Gothic style, with pointed wimpergs and a rich figurative program. Like the cathedral and the campanile the Baptistery is built of bichromatic Carrara marble, white with recurring horizontal lines in blueish-grey stone, also used for abstract floral and graphic decoration, a unique trait of some of the most important religious buildings in Tuscany (in the neighboring Florence and Pistoia the dark marmo verde from Prato was used).

The east portal from probably around 1200 is facing the façade of the cathedral. The door is flanked by two columns with foliage decoration, a direct copy of a classical model. Engaged with the portal frame are two smaller three-quarter columns with a simpler, less deep floral ornamentation. The inner jambs between each pair of columns are decorated each with eleven figurative reliefs executed in Byzantine style. On the left there are depictions of the months (with September and October combined in one panel), beginning with January at the bottom. On the right it begins at the top with the Ascension of Christ, then angels, Mary with lifted hands, then the Apostels depicted in pairs looking up, and second to the bottom the Harrowing of Hell; the lowermost relief shows King David. The tripartite form is conveyed in the arch with three retreating archivolts with the Twenty-Four Elders in medaillons and the Lamb of God as the keystone. …