Portal:The arts/Featured article/July, 2009

The Tomb of Antipope John XXIII is the marble tomb monument for Antipope John XXIII, Baldassare Coscia, created by Donatello and Michelozzo, and located in the Florence Baptistry adjacent to the Duomo. It was commissioned by the executors of Coscia's will after his death on December 22, 1419 and completed during the 1420s, establishing it as one of the early landmarks of Renaissance Florence. According to Ferdinand Gregorovius, the tomb is "at once the sepulchre of the Great Schism in the church and the last Papal tomb which is outside Rome itself". The tomb monument's design included three Virtues, Coscia's family arms, a gilded bronze effigy supported above an inscription-bearing sarcophagus, a Madonna and Child in a half-lunette, and a canopy. At the time of its completion, the monument was the tallest sculpture in Florence, and one of very few tombs within the Baptistry or the neighboring Duomo. The tomb monument was the first of several collaborations between Donatello and Michelozzo, and the attribution of its various elements to each of them has been debated by art historians, as have the interpretations of its design and iconography. (more...)