Lorenzo Ghiberti, a Florentine painter and metalworker,…

Lorenzo Ghiberti, a Florentine painter and metalworker, has learned from his goldsmith stepfather, and from studying the works of northern artists, the techniques of working with metals in the Late Gothic style.

The twenty-year-old Ghiberti had in 1401 adapted antique Roman figural naturalism in “Abraham and Isaac,” his proposed bronze reliefs for the Florence Baptistery door commission.

Winning the commission over Filippo Brunelleschi, Jacopo della Quercia, and others, Ghiberti commences work two years later on the twenty-eight bronze high reliefs for the first set of doors, blending innovative Renaissance features with elements drawn from the Late Gothic or International Style.

The original plan had been for the doors to depict scenes from the Old Testament, and the trial piece was the sacrifice of Isaac.

However, the plan is changed to depict scenes from the New Testament instead.

To fulfill this commission, Ghiberti sets up a large workshop in which many artists are to train, including Masolino, Uccello, Micelozzo, Antonio Pollaiuolo, and the gifted twenty-year-old Florentine sculptor Donato di Niccolo di Bette Bardi, called Donatello.

(The doors currently on display today are a reproduction; the actual doors occasionally travel to various world-class museums.)