A fifteenth-century Florentine is speaking to Chicago.

His name is Lorenzo Ghiberti and he is remarkably well preserved, as you would be if your image was cast in bronze and burnished in gold.

Forget King Tut. Forget the museum blockbusters. Right now, at the Art of Institute of Chicago in a single small gallery, you can see a small piece of one man’s magnificent life work, absent of hype, speaking for itself.

It’s a set of doors, or, to be more accurate, a few panels. A miniature exhibit of a monumental work.

Fly to Florence and go to the Cathedral. Stand outside its main entrance. Look west, and you’ll see a green-and-white marble building. It’s the Baptistery, a place not only for baptisms but for other religious and civic activities. There you’ll see two enormous bronze doors (they’re seventeen feet high and weigh three tons) with ten relief panels telling the stories of Adam and Eve and their descendants. Surrounding them are small niches with sculpted images of prophets and others, including the artist and his son, Vittorio.

Three of those panels are in Chicago and on display in Gallery 116 at the Art Institute until October 14. You can visit at lunch and see them in ten minutes. That would be unfair, though, because it took Ghiberti twenty-five years to create the doors and it took another twenty-five to restore them. Besides, the panels aren’t a quick read. Ghiberti’s was a revolutionary (at the time) narrative style in which we don’t just see an image of Adam and Eve in relief. We see the whole story in a single panel, from their creation to their temptation to their banishment. The other two visiting panels represent David and Goliath (with a wonderful image of David slaying the giant that adolescent boys will love), and Jacob and Esau.

Why is this exhibit remarkable? First, the sheer beauty of the work. Michelangelo himself called the doors “worthy to be the Gates of Paradise,” providing a twenty-first-century curator a wonderful opportunity for naming the show.

Second, such works cause us to think of Things Trancendent, something we TV-watching Americans need reminding of since, as Joseph Epstein puts it in his little book Envy, life has a finish line, and we’re all heading inexorably toward it. Some years ago the Wall Street Journal reported on what had been recognized as a syndrome inflicting Americans traveling in Europe and viewing great works of art—a sort of swooning on the part of those unused to thinking about eternal themes. They had to return to their hotels and take to their beds.

For slow centuries, the doors’ surface had been degrading in the wind and weather. Then, in biblical fashion, the Arno River flooded Florence in 1966 and knocked several panels out of their frame. So the conservators in Florence went to work. A modern copy was put in place of the original doors, which after restoration were stored in oxygen-free cases filled with nitrogen (would that each immortal soul received such care). Why so long a restoration? You’ll see when you visit the adjoining gallery in which the conservation techniques are explained. These things take time.

“The Gates of Paradise” began its North American tour in Atlanta and travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this fall. After touring, the panels will be returned to their original frame and displayed in an hermetically sealed room in the Museum of the Florence Cathedral.

They will never travel again.

Marie T. Sullivan

Presented in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, The Gates of Paradise remains on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago until October 14. Information: 312/443–3600 or artic.edu.