Morgan's Gates of Paradise

Though the doors to Morgan’s Library evoke Italian Renaissance precedents (such as Lorenzo Ghiberti’s doors for the Florence Baptistery), they were a modern creation. Their origins and attribution are murky, obscured by a network of dealers.

The doors (walnut with mahogany moldings) are nine-and-a-half feet tall and adorned with cast-bronze panels that depict scenes in the life of Christ. Barely detectable at right (set into the second perimeter rosette from the bottom) is a doorbell. Guests would have pressed the button to be admitted into the ornate Rotunda.