This baptistery is said to have been commenced by the architect Benedetto di Antelamo in A.D. 1196,[70] who is also credited with many other works here, and specially with much of the early sculpture in the Duomo and baptistery; it was not completed until 1260.
There are three great doors to the baptistery. On the northern is sculptured the Tree of Life, and over this twelve prophets carrying medallions with half figures of the Apostles. Below are subjects from the lives of Our Lord and S. John Baptist. The western door has a sculpture of the Last Judgment, and the southern a not very intelligible, though no doubt symbolical, figure of a man seated in a tree and gathering honey. Inside there are various sculptures, and among them a series of illustrations of the labours of the months.
My day in Parma was pleasantly concluded with a visit to the Gallery, and then, finding no more mediæval remains, I pushed on to Piacenza.
This is a city of no small interest, and remarkable above everything else in the possession of a Palazzo Publico of unusual and striking design—a building of special value and interest to me, since it is a capital example of the use of brick and marble together. Before looking at any of the churches I devoted myself to this building with the more satisfaction when I found that it was really, in some respects, one of the very best works of the sort that I had ever seen.
An inscription carved under a banner on a square stone, in the front, records the commencement of the work in 1281, and I think we may assume that no part of it is of much later date than this. It consists, as do most of these buildings, of a lofty open ground story, and a principal story
