Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise": Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance

Amy R. Bloch’s Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”: Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance (which follows on the heels of The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece, ed., Gary Radke, exh. cat., Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2007 [click here for review]) is a much-needed new interpretation of the doors’ meaning. The chief question that animates Bloch’s study is “how, as an artist interested in books and ideas, fascinated by the science of vision, and deeply engaged in his period’s revival of classical learning and culture [as revealed in the Commentaries], he approached a commission to represent the Old Testament" (2). Bloch proposes convincingly that Ghiberti left evidence that he wanted viewers to touch his sculptures-an important topic in the Commentaries (227)-noting that he did not remove excess wax behind the high-relief stone carrier, placed at eye level (whereas he did this for all other figures to lessen their weight and cost). According to Bloch, drama and emotion are of interest to Ghiberti in the Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, and David panels (chapters 2, 5, 6, and 9).