A Siena baptistery reopens after three years of restoration

Siena (Italy), June 25 (EFE).- After three years of restoration, the ancient baptismal font of Siena, embellished by Donatello with his work 'Feast of Herod', has been reopened to the public. The baptismal font is one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance and is located in the baptistery of the cathedral of Siena, a Tuscan city of stone.

CAMERA: DANIEL CÁCERES.

FOOTAGE OF THE BAPTISTERY LOCATED IN SIENA, ITALY.

STATEMENTS BY EMANUELA DAFFRA, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BUILDING OF THE HARD STONES OF SIENA AND CARDINAL AUGUSTO PAOLO LOJUDICE, ARCHBISHOP OF SIENA.

TRANSLATION:

Emanuela Daffra, Superintendent of the Hard Stones of Siena:

1.- "We are in the Baptistery of the Cathedral of Siena, in the center of which stands the baptismal font created by Jacopo della Quercia, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello in the first decades of the 15th century. In 1431, what the dawn of the Renaissance had somehow come to an end in Siena".

2.- "It is one of Donatello's masterpieces from those years."

3.- "The history told is that of the Gospel of John the Baptist, whose head is cut off by Salome, the daughter of Herodias, the wife of Herod, at the instigation of her mother. And we see the next moment, after the beheading has occurred and, therefore, Salome Herodias and Herod in the foreground and we see, as in a flashback film in the background, the servants carrying the head of the Baptist.

4.- "In this relief, Donatello uses perspective with a flattening, increasingly subtle in the background of the relief, to also give a dynamism that shows in time the events that precede the scene that we see in the foreground."

5.- "Thus, the tour was preceded, accompanied and followed by diagnostic investigations that allowed us to understand what the materials were, what characteristics they had, what fragility they presented and also how it was assembled."

6.- "The first phase of these investigations made it possible to understand that there were phenomena of loss of materials, even important ones, that advised disassembly in order to intervene even from behind in the case of the bronzes and free the stone part of elements that were suffocating it".

7.- "Siena was extraordinary at that time and was characterized as an alternative to Florence. Florence and Siena have always been somewhat rivals."

Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice, Archbishop of Siena:

1.- "It seemed to me that I was seeing other works and not the same ones that I had seen both when they were here in the fountain, and when I saw them after a few months in the hard stone."

2.- "It means having recomposed something that surely, just as it was at the beginning, one could almost have the suspicion, the doubt that it had been completely lost. I don't know if it reminds me a little of the passage that we all remember, at least those of us who are older than the Sistine Chapel, between before and after the famous restoration 25 or more years ago, where something different seemed to have been found. Here I also had the same feeling.