Tuscan craftsmen, Wall paintings of the matroneum

The walls of the matroneo (women’s gallery) are decorated with fresco wall paintings in the sole pigments of vine black (charcoal made from grape vines) and San Giovanni white (lime white). Within the Baptistery, this is a rare case of ornament free from any religious iconographic or other symbolic meaning. The frescos, by various painters of the second half of the 1200s, imitate the two-tone marble decorations of the temple walls, and represent geometric figures, abstract motifs, zoomorphic and plant patterns, crosses, vases, candlesticks and other figures typical of Tuscan Romanesque marble inlays. The decorations were probably made when the work on the mosaics on the vault was already started, but could have provided a sort of “stop-gap” ornamentation while waiting completion of the mosaics on the matroneo walls.