Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise

The Baptistery Door Competitions

The Gates of Paradise Lorenzo Ghiberti 1452,gilded bronze Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence Cathedral) Baptistery (East Doors) Florence, Italy

Click here  to see our gift shop.

When Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition, he faced tough competitors like Jacopo della Quercia and Filippo Brunelleschi, who was famous for his invention of linear perspective. Lorenzo Ghiberti's door project took him more than 20 years to complete. Lorenzo Ghiberti executed 14 bronze reliefs featuring scenes from the life of Christ, Evangelists, and the church fathers, each scene surrounded by a quatrefoil design matching the design of Andrea Pisano's earlier doors. The Gothic style of Lorenzo Ghiberti with its swaying draperies began to change, however, even as the individual panels were completed. Lorenzo Ghiberti's later panels show an increased interest in spatial depth and a somewhat more naturalistic figure style in which the figures are no longer quite so overwhelmed by masses of drapery.

The Gates of Paradise

Once again, the east doors were switched. Lorenzo Ghiberti's competition doors were then moved to the north side of the Baptistery when The Gates of Paradise were installed. Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise remain a popular tourist attraction today for visitors to Florence, who are delighted to see the small likeness of the great sculptor himself on the bronze doors.

Lorenzo Ghiberti was influential in the stylistic development of later artists, most notably his own pupils, Donato Donatello and Paolo Uccello, and later Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Brenda, Art Historian