Lorenzo Ghiberti

Hugely influential in his lifetime, Early Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti is best known for creating two sets of doors in bronze for the Florence Baptistery. Ghiberti won a competition for the Baptistery doors commission, immediately launching the sculptor’s career to prominence. The first doors, comprised of 28 panels depicting scenes from the New Testament, are in the style of International Gothic; the second doors, comprised of ten panels that illustrate stories from the Old Testament, display the values of Renaissance humanism, employing a greater naturalism of form and figure, and more expansive perspective and pictorial space. Many young sculptors passed through Ghiberti’s workshop: Donatello, Uccello, and many others worked for a time as assistants, learning Ghiberti’s pioneering techniques and styles. In a series of treatises Ghiberti wrote, he claimed,“few important things were done in our city which were not devised or designed by my hand.”