Background
Ghiberti was born in 1381 in Pelago, Florence, Italy.
architect painter sculptor writer goldsmith
Ghiberti was born in 1381 in Pelago, Florence, Italy.
He learned the trade of a goldsmith under his father Ugoccione, commonly called Cione. He then went to work in the Florence workshop of Bartoluccio di Michele.
In 1400 Ghiberti went to the Romagna to escape the plague in Florence and assisted another painter in executing frescoes (since destroyed) on the walls of the castle of Carlo Malatesta.
On his return to Florence in 1401 Ghiberti took part with seven other Tuscan sculptors (including Filippo Brunelleschi and Jacopo della Quercia) in the historic competition for the gilded bronze north doors of the Florence Baptistery and won it.
The theme was the sacrifice of Isaac, and both Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's trial reliefs are preserved.
When the commission was given to Ghiberti in 1403 (and renewed in 1407), the subjects were changed from the Old to the New Testament.
There are 28 scenes, placed within Gothic quatrefoils, as on the bronze south doors (1330 - 1336) of the Baptistery by Andrea Pisano.
The figures are gilded and set in high relief against a neutral ground.
Border strips separating the panels are filled with a rich continuity of vegetable and animal life, and 48 heads of male and female prophets occur at the intersections.
Ghiberti formed a large workshop to carry out his great undertaking, and it was a training ground for the next generation of Florentine painters and sculptors, including Donatello, Masolino, and Paolo Uccello.
The doors were completed in 1424.
Ghiberti made several other works during the period from 1403 to 1424, including two larger-than-life bronze statues of saints for the niches on the exterior of Orsanmichele in Florence.
John the Baptist was completed for the cloth merchants' guild in 1416, and St. Matthew was installed in its niche in 1422 by the bankers' guild.
John the Baptist still reflects the International Gothic style, as do the earlier panels of the north doors.
After a trip to Venice in 1424, Ghiberti returned to Florence, and in 1425 he received the commission for the east doors of the Baptistery.
The doors open on paradiso, the area between an Italian baptistery and its cathedral.
Michelangelo is said to have remarked that the doors were worthy of being the gates of Paradise, and since then they have been called the Gates of Paradise.
For this pair of doors Ghiberti was permitted to alter the whole layout and reduce the number of Old Testament scenes from 28 to 10.
All 10 scenes plus the surrounding sections of frieze (which includes in a medallion a self-portrait of the sculptor) were modeled in wax between 1425 and 1437, at which time they were cast in bronze.
Finishing and gilding took longer, and not until 1452 were the doors installed. In each panel there are several scenes, which flow from one to the next in correct perspective depth (owing to the contemporary researches of Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti).
Thus in the first panel, the story of Adam, occur the episodes of the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, and their Expulsion from the Garden, from left to right in the foreground, and the Temptation in the far distance, in very low relief.
The nude figures of Eve in this composition are among the first sensuous female nudes of the Renaissance.
Likewise advanced is the artist's study of drapery forms throughout the panels.
In 1428 he was enlisted to create another statue, St. Stephen, for Orsanmichele.
Between 1432 and 1442 the artist designed and supervised the casting of another bronze reliquary, that of St. Zenobius, in the Cathedral, Florence, and also designed a number of stained-glass windows for the Cathedral. Ghiberti's works in marble include the tomb slabs for Lodovico degli Obizi (died 1424) and Bartolommeo Valori (died 1427), both in Sta Croce, Florence.
He also designed the tabernacle that encloses Fra Angelico's Linaiuoli Madonna of 1433.
During the last years of his life Ghiberti wrote his Commentarii, in which he reveals his knowledge, shrewdness, and cultivated sensitivity.
He was actively involved in the spreading of humanist ideas. His east doors of the Baptistery of Florence are a supreme monument to the age of humanism.
Lorenzo had a son: Vittorio.