客西马尼园祈祷

Everyone knows Ghiberti for his gilded bronze doors on the Florence Baptistery. This is something else, and easy to walk under without ever noticing. High in the drum of the cathedral dome, the one Brunelleschi had just closed over Florence, a ring of round windows needed filling, and in 1443 Ghiberti won the commission to design several of them. This one shows Christ praying in the garden of Gethsemane while his apostles sleep below. Ghiberti drew the cartoon. A glass master, Bernardo di Francesco, built it from coloured glass over the following years. He made no attempt at tidy perspective. Christ, the descending angel and the sleeping men loom huge over a tiny stage of trees and little houses. To see it at all you have to look up, into the light of the dome that his old rival had raised.