Antelami's Baptistery of Parma: the octagon of months and zodiac
Begun in 1196, the Baptistery of Parma unites architecture and sculpture: the statues of the months, the zodiac, the animal frieze and Barlaam's legend.
Beside Parma Cathedral rises an octagonal building of pink Verona marble, tall and austere, pierced by three carved portals. Above the north portal an inscription records that the work was begun in 1196 and names its author: the sculptor Benedetto, known as Antelami. The Baptistery of Parma is one of the masterpieces of European Romanesque, a place where architecture and sculpture together tell of time, salvation and human destiny.
An octagon for rebirth
Like many baptisteries, that of Parma has an octagonal plan. In Christian tradition eight was the number of resurrection and new life, because Christ rose on the day after the Sabbath, the eighth day of the week. Baptism, which marked the spiritual rebirth of the believer, thus found a fitting architectural form. Inside, the octagon becomes sixteen sides, and the dome was decorated in the thirteenth century with frescoes in a Byzantine-influenced style.
The works lasted a long time, partly because of interruptions caused by the city's political struggles and by the difficulty of obtaining marble, and the baptistery was consecrated in 1270. The attribution of all the sculptures to Antelami himself is debated: many were certainly carried out by his workshop, and some parts probably date from later decades. A unified project is nonetheless evident, binding the structure to the decoration.
The months and the seasons
In the interior gallery a cycle of statues is preserved depicting the months of the year, the seasons and some signs of the zodiac. Each month is represented by a man engaged in the agricultural labours typical of the period: pruning, reaping, the grape harvest, sowing, the slaughter of the pig. Beside them, the zodiac signs recall the rhythm of the heavens that governs that of the earth.
This theme, widespread throughout Romanesque art, expressed a profound idea: human time, measured by work and toil, fits into the cosmic order willed by God. In the baptistery, the place of rebirth, the cycle of the year became an image of the Christian's life, called to travel through time towards eternity. The Parma statues are among the finest representations of the months to have come down to us from the Middle Ages.
The frieze and the legend of Barlaam
Outside, along the base of the building, runs a frieze of panels with real and fantastic animals: griffins, centaurs, sirens, dragons, lions and hybrid creatures, drawn from the medieval bestiaries that gave every creature a moral or religious meaning. It is a kind of zoological encyclopaedia that encircles the baptistery like a symbolic belt, reminding the viewer that all creation, even in its strangest forms, takes part in the divine design.
On the south portal, called the Portal of Life, is carved the parable taken from the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat: a man, pursued by a unicorn, takes refuge in a tree whose roots are gnawed by two animals, one white and one black, symbols of day and night. Below him gapes the mouth of a dragon, but the man is distracted by tasting the honey of the branches. It is an image of human life forgetting its own fragility.
To visit the Baptistery of Parma is to read a carved summa of medieval thought, in which heaven, earth, animals and human labour are bound by a single design. Antelami's signature above the portal reminds us that behind this order lay the talent of an artist aware of his own worth.