Lorenzo Ghiberti

Lorenzo Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti on Gates of Paradise, Baptistery, Florence
Born	Lorenzo di Bartolo 1378 (1378) Florence, Italy
Died	December 1, 1455 (aged 76–77) Florence, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Sculpture
Notable work	Gates of Paradise, Florence Baptistery
Movement	Early Renaissance

Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 – 1 December 1455), born Lorenzo di Bartolo, was an Italian artist of the early Renaissance best known for works in sculpture and metalworking.

Life

Early life

Ghiberti was born in Pelago (Florence). His father was Bartoluccio Ghiberti, a trained artist and goldsmith, who trained his son in the gold trade. Lorenzo Ghiberti then went to work in the workshop of Bartoluccio de Michele, where Brunelleschi also got his training. When the bubonic plague struck Florence in 1400, Ghiberti emigrated to Rimini, where he assisted in the completion of wall frescoes of the castle of Carlo I Malatesta.

Career

Ghiberti first became famous when he won the 1401 competition for the first set of bronze doors for the Baptistery of the cathedral in Florence. Brunelleschi was the runner up. The original plan was for the doors to depict scenes from the Old Testament, and the trial piece was the sacrifice of Isaac. However, the plan was changed to depict scenes from the New Testament, instead.

To carry out this commission, he set up a large workshop in which many artists trained, including Donatello, Masolino, Michelozzo, Uccello, and Antonio Pollaiuolo. Ghiberti had re-invented the lost-wax casting (cire perdute) of bronze-casting as it was used by the ancient Romans. This made his workshop so special to young artists.

When his first set of twenty-eight panels was complete, Ghiberti was commissioned to produce a second set for another doorway in the church, this time with scenes from the Old Testament, as originally intended for his first set. Instead of twenty-eight scenes, he produced ten rectangular scenes in a completely different style. They were more naturalistic, with perspective and a greater idealization of the subject. Michelangelo dubbed these scenes the "Gates of Paradise." "The Gates of Paradise" is known to be a monument to the age of humanism.

He was then commissioned to execute monumental gilded bronze statues to be placed within select niches of the Orsanmichele in Florence, one of Saint John the Baptist for the Arte di Calimala (Wool Merchants' Guild) and one of St. Matthew for the Arte di Cambio (Bankers' Guild). Finally, he also produced a bronze figure of St. Stephen for the Arte della Lana (Wool Manufacturers' Guild).

End of LIFE

He was also a collector of classical artifacts and a historian. He was actively involved in the spreading of humanist ideas. His unfinished Commentarii are a valuable source of information about Renaissance art and contain an autobiography, the first of an artist. This work was a major source for Vasari's Vite. Ghiberti died in Florence at the age of seventy-seven.

Renaissance Perspective

Prior to the Renaissance, a clearly modern optical basis of perspective was given in the period between 1028 and 1038, when the Arab polymath Alhazen (al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, d. ca. 1041 CE) in his Book of Optics (Kitab al-manazir; known in Latin as De aspectibus or Perspectiva), explained that light projects conically into the eye, discussing perspective. By the 14th century, Alhazen's Book of Optics was available in Italian translation, entitled Deli Aspecti, and Ghiberti relied heavily upon this work, quoting it "verbatim and at length" while framing his account of art and its aesthetic imperatives in the “Commentario terzo.” Alhazen’s work was thus "central to the development of Ghiberti’s thought about art and visual aesthetics" and "may well have been central to the development of artificial perspective in early Renaissance Italian painting."

Ghiberti's “Commentario terzo” includes the earliest surviving autobiography of an artist and he discusses the development of art from the time of Cimabue through to his own work. In describing his second bronze gate, he states: "In this work I sought to imitate nature as closely as possible, both in proportions and in perspective... the buildings appear as seen by the eye of one who gazes on them from a distance." Paolo Uccello, who was commonly regarded as the first great master of perspective, worked in Ghiberti's workshop for several years, so it became difficult to determine the extent to which Uccello's innovations in perspective were due to Ghiberti's instruction. Donatello, known for one of the first examples of central-point perspective in sculpture, also worked briefly Ghiberti's workshop. It was also about this time that Paolo began his lifelong friendship with Donatello. In about 1413 one of Ghiberti's contemporaries, Filippo Brunelleschi, demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective used today by artists, by painting the outlines of various Florentine buildings onto a mirror. When the building's outline was continued, he noticed that all of the lines converged on the horizon line.

Gallery

• 
  Ghiberti's winning piece for the 1401 competition, with the scene still framed by a medieval motif. Ghiberti used this quatrefoil motif for the doors awarded from the 1401 commission; these doors are now located on the north side of the baptistery. However, this quatrefoil motif is absent in the later "Gates of Paradise" panels, which is located on the east side of the baptistery.
• 
  Gates of Paradise, Baptistery, Florence. The doors in situ are reproductions.
• 
  Angled view of a panel with the story of Abraham from the Florence Gates of Paradise (see above).
• 
  Tomb of Ghiberti in the Basilica Santa Croce in Florence

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Golden Oldies With a New Sparkle, Review by Roberta Smith in the New York Times