A Baptistery below the Baptistery of Florence
Franklin Toker
In memory of Millard MeissThe idea that the Baptistery Florence is a Roman or Early Christian building surely one oldest themes in European art history (Figs. 1, 2).1 It was supported by Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Poliziano, and hundred other eminent writers from thirteenth to nineteenth century, when German scholars claimed S. Giovanni actually Romanesque. Since then, despite conviction score authors who felt they had laid rest an Baptistery, old specter periodically revives even gains new adherents.2 Above all thesis Romanesque actively resisted Italy, where each year documentary, stylistic, archaeological arguments are published support date.3 These Italian studies underline fact evidence on both sides question scanty, inconclusive, often maddeningly ambiguous.
Art Bulletin