Worthy of Paradise

It was a ceremonial week for art-loving Florentines. On the very same day that the city honored its most distinguished foreign citizen (see above), fishwives, shopgirls, nuns, monks and scholars jammed the Piazza del Duomo. They had come to see the reinstallation of the famed Baptistery doors of the cathedral. Sculptor Ghiberti's 15th Century doors, with their intricate panels, each like a separate, delicate canvas, for centuries had been the pride of Florence. Worthy of Paradise, Michelangelo had said, and all Florence had agreed.

But the corrosion of their bronze base had seeped through the pores in the gold leaf with which Ghiberti had covered them. Over the years, the doors had dulled, and even Florentines had come to despair that there was any gold left at all.

Two years ago, a bronze smelter named Bruno Bearzi set out to prove that there was. Instead of scraping the doors, as others had tried, he mixed a special solvent to wash away the dirt and corrosion of centuries. Last week, while the Baptistery choir sang and long trumpets blared, the curtains over the doors fell away. At the sight, women fell to their knees; men wept. After all the years, Ghiberti's doors glistened and gleamed once more as he had made them.

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