The Silver Altar
Did you know that there’s a fantastic silver treasure in the Duomo museum in Florence?
In a room on the first floor where most visitors don’t even enter is an incredible silver altar
It was commissioned in January 1366 for the Baptistry and it took about 250 kilograms (approx. 551 pounds) of silver to make it, and no less than 116 years to complete it.
The altar is in fact an altar-dossal, or altar frontal, which was made to decorate the front of the high altar in the Baptistery. A kind of luxury mask that was placed on the front of the alter on important Church days.
In the museum, the altar is placed on a raised area with steps leading up to it. It makes you feel you’re going up to something divine and this position is exactly as it was when placed in the Baptistery. This position was also meant to favour a ‘pictorial’ reading of the storied panels. There are 12 panels telling stories about Saint John the Baptist, the patron Saint of Florence.
At the end of 1300’s it was attached to a mobile altar set up in the centre of the Baptistery and three times a year the Baptistery’s relics were displayed on it for the admiration of the faithful. On 13th January (Feast of the Baptism of Christ), on 24th June (Feast of San John the Baptist) and the Easter week.
Two years after Michelangelo was born (1477), it was decided to transform the dossal into a free-standing altar, providing it with two flanks, also ornamented with silver reliefs.
The beautiful “frames”, above and below were added in 1483, the same years when Botticelli was painting the Birth of Venus and the Primavera.
These are in wood and gilded, and the above cornice was most probably inspired by the cornice on the Medici Palace, built for Cosimo the Elder. So the altar takes in elements also from Renaissance architecture.
It holds 95 niches for statuettes, whereas thirteen have been lost or stolen.
I love the historiated panels. The scenes are narrative and often there are two or three scenes inside one panel. One of my favourite is the Annunciation to Zacharias which also holds the episode of the Visitation, both scenes from the Gospel of Luke. It was made by Bernardo Cennini and there’s a detail in it that makes you think of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
Come and see the Silver altar with me and then we’ll also see the other amazing works displayed in the Duomo museum: the relics which were placed on the silver altar twice a year, the original Baptistery doors, the Pietà by Michelangelo (which holds his self-portrait), and the most surprising statue from the early Renaessance you can imagine.
After the Duomo museum, we’ll of course visit the Baptistery to see where the Silver altar was placed.