Three of Lorenzo Ghiberti's famed Gates of Paradise panels are winging their way from Italy to America this week.
The bronze panels from Florence's Baptistery, which have just completed a 25-year restoration, will not be leaving Italy again, Florentine art officials say.
So their tour of the States this year will give American art lovers a unique chance to see works which have for centuries been judged a touchstone of Renaissance art.
The panels showing famous stories from the Bible are travelling separately to reduce the risk of anything happening to them.
Adam and Eve left Monday for Atlanta, the first stage of a three-museum tour.
Saul and David, the first two kings of Israel, will join them on Wednesday and the brothers Jacob and Esau on Thursday.
"They were just too important to travel together," said Patrizio Osticresi of Florence's Museo Opera del Duomo.
Ghiberti took 27 years to make the 20-foot-high doors on the eastern side of the baptistery, facing the Duomo.
Its ten panels show the first real influence of Classical art on the Renaissance.
Ghiberti's figures leap out at the viewer, full of nuance and power, while his intricate backgrounds show a groundbreaking use of perspective.
An admiring Michelangelo later said the doors were worthy of adorning the entrance to Heaven.
The panels will have the first American outing at Atlanta's High Museum of Art from April 28 to July 15.
The show will feature discoveries made during their restoration and the groundbreaking techniques, including laser technology, used to clean the effects of centuries of weather and pollution.
The panels will then move to Chicago's Art Institute (July 28-October 13) and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 30-January 13) before they return to Florence, never to travel again.
New York will also host a major conference on Ghiberti and the restoration of the doors on November 16.
Copies of the doors have been up since 1990 and this will remain the case.
Once the panels are back in Florence, the original doors will be reassembled, placed in a hermetically sealed glass case, and kept in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
Work on the doors was carried out by Florence's Opificio delle Pietre Dure.
Founded in the 16th century, it now houses the world s leading laboratory for the restoration of Renaissance sculpture.
