A rich account of the giant bronze doors created by Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti--so exquisite that Michelangelo proclaimed them suitable to serve as the Gates of Paradise.

This book examines the heretofore unsuspected complexity of Lorenzo Ghiberti's sculpted representations of Old Testament narratives in his Gates of Paradise (1425–52), the second set of doors he made for the Florence Baptistery and a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture. One of the most intellectually engaged and well-read artists of his age, Ghiberti found inspiration in ancient and medieval texts, many of which he and his contacts in Florence's humanist community shared, read, and discussed. He was fascinated by the science of vision, by the functioning of nature, and, above all, by the origins and history of art. These unusually well-defined intellectual interests, reflected in his famous Commentaries, shaped his approach in the Gates. Through the selection, imaginative interpretation, and arrangement of biblical episodes, Ghiberti fashioned multi-textured narratives that explore the human condition and express his ideas on a range of social, political, artistic, and philosophical issues.

"[An] illustrated account of the history, importance, and painstaking restoration of Lorenz Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise". After nearly thirty years of restoration, the gilt bronze doors that Lorenzo Ghiberti made for the Florence Baptistery between 1425 and 1452 are once again on show for the world to see. This masterpiece of 15th-century sculpture, which Michelangelo called the Gates of Paradise, has found a new home in the Museo dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. This book presents the first images of the fully restored Gates, traces their long history, and offers a careful look at the Old Testament scenes on the bronze panels ..."--Publisher description.

Instructive exposition and illustration of all three sets of doors at the baptistery, which were seminal in the development of Renaissance art. With excellent colour plates.

A biography that restores America's foremost 19th-century champion of reason and secularism to the still contested 21st-century public square.

Volume 1 of 2. Lorenzo Ghiberti, sculptor and towering figure of the Renaissance, was the creator of the celebrated Bronze Doors of the Baptistery at Florence, a work that occupied him for twenty years and became known (at Michelangelo's suggestion, according to tradition) as the Doors of Paradise. Here Richard Krautheimer takes what Charles S. Seymour, Jr., describes as "a fascinating journey into the mind, career, and inventiveness of one of the indisputably outstanding sculptors of all the Western tradition." This one-volume edition includes an extensive new preface and bibliography by the author. Richard Krautheimer, Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, currently lives in Rome. He is the author of numerous works, including the Pelican Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture and Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton). Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology, 31. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.