Group D: 5 Framing/Framing Guidlines/Door of Paradise - LRB

Company Name: The Door of Paradise
Style: Early Renaissance
Address: Florence Italy at the Florence Baptistery
Website:http://www.mega.it/eng/egui/monu/bo.htm

Products Information / model numbers: Guided Baptistery Doors
Special Remarks: Ghiberti, The Door of Paradise

Ghiberti, the Door of Paradise

Made of Bronze by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Florence Baptistery.The Bronze frame focuses attention on the 10 Old Testament scenes. This was located at the North Entrance of the Baptistry. Floral Motifs.

Ghiberti's career was dominated by his two successive commissions for pairs of bronze doors to the Battistero di San Giovanni or Florence Baptistery. They are recognized as a major masterpiece of the Early Renaissance, and were famous and influential from their unveiling. Ghiberti first became famous when as a 23 year-old he won the 1401 competition for the first set of bronze doors;
To carry out this commission, he set up a large workshop in which many artists trained, including  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 a major monument of the age of Renaissance humanism.

This second pair of doors was also acclaimed by the Florentines, who immediately decided to commission Ghiberti, now at the height of his career, with the execution of yet another set of doors, this time without a competition, which were to be placed at the north entrance.
These doors took 27 years to complete (1425-1452), but the result was so outstanding (even Michelangelo said that they were "worthy of Paradise"), that they were hung on the east side, in the place of honour, and Ghiberti's first set of doors was moved to the north entrance (where they can still be seen today).

Their structure is completely different: the panels are reduced to 10, five to each door, and are surrounded by a continuous sequence of small heads, floral motifs and niches which, in their turn, contain small statues of Prophets and Sybils. The iconographic formula, dedicated to stories from the Old Testament, was created by Leonardo Bruni, humanist and chancellor of the Republic
Ghiberti followed it by inserting more than one episode in each panel, using daring but coherent perspective solutions. By this time the artist had absorbed a great deal from the artistic experience of his ex-pupils Paolo Uccello and (especially) Donatello, apart from having helpers like Michelozzo and Benozzo Gozzoli working under him during this period.