Tuscan craftsmen, Mosaic with Stories of Genesis (third register)
- Authors
- Tuscan craftsmen - Arturo Viligiardi - Alesso Baldovinetti
- Date
- C. 1270-1290
- Collocation
- Baptistery of Saint John
- Specific location
- Interior, vault, third register from top, south, south-east, east, north-east, north sectors
- Material
- Polychrome tesserae glass paste, gold
- Technique
- Mosaic
The mosaics of the third register of the vault are by a generation of Tuscan masters, the first close to Coppo di Marcovaldo and the last updated on Giotto in Assisi, who created them between about 1270 and 1295. They depict the Stories of Genesis, divided into fifteen panels, defined by columns and entablatures, that arrange them in an anti-clockwise direction in groups of three out on five segments of the vault.
North segment: 1.God gives life to creation; 2.Creation of Adam; 3.Creation of Eve.
Northeast segment: 4. Sin of the ancestors; 5. God questions the forefathers; 6. Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.
East segment: 7. Work of the forefathers; 8. Sacrifice of Abel and Cain; 9. Death of Abel.
Southeast segment (by Arturo Viligiardi): 10.Lamech kills Cain and Tubalkain; Noah and his three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.; 12. Noah builds the ark.
South segment: 13. In a single panel you can see the entrance of the animals to the ark and the last day of the flood.
The biblical subject prefigures the meanings of Baptism, which was administered in this temple: since Adam and Eve, letting themselves be deceived by the diabolical serpent, ate the forbidden fruit, staining themselves and the humanity that derives from them with sin, so children must wash this primordial sin with the water of Baptism, once collected in the tub in the center of the building. Even the episodes of Noah, of the Ark of the Flood, prefigure Baptism: as God washed away ancient humanity corrupted by sin with the Flood, so whoever was baptized purified his soul from Adam's guilt.