Tuscan craftsmen, Mosaic with Last Judgment

The mosaic decoration of the three western segments of the dome depicts the Last Judgment, and is attributed to one or more artists of the circle of Jacopo di Meliore and Coppo di Marcovaldo.

At centre, within a clypeus eight meters in diameter, is a towering Christ the Judge. Above and to the sides, two groups of angels blare their trumpets and show the signs of the Passion. Flanking the clypeus, on either side of the middle register, there are the Madonna and John the Baptist seated on benches and flanked by 12 angels and the Twelve Apostles. With his right hand, Christ welcomes the saved, who in the lower register on the southwest side, wait to ascend to Paradise, where they will be welcomed in the arms of the patriarchs. With his left hand, Christ instead turns away the damned, fated to disappear in Satan’s gorge. Beneath the feet of the Saviour are the open sarcophagi of those who are resurrecting, amid waiting angels and demons. This detail recalls the sepulchres once placed both inside the Baptistery and outside, in the ancient and large cemetery, and communicates the Christian hope of resurrection. The themes of resurrection and baptism were intimately linked: as the dead are buried in the tomb, so every person is born stained by Adam's sin, which likewise condemns their soul to death; and as the righteous will emerge from their tombs on Judgment Day, so every Florentine is washed of sin with the rite of Baptism, bathing in the water of the font (significantly located below the figure of Christ, at centre) - and from the moment of baptism, their soul is reborn in Christ.