The Second Set of Doors at the Baptistery

The maintenance and completion of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, one of the oldest and most significant buildings in Florence, was entrusted to the Arte del Calimala Guild. This wool merchants’ guild was the oldest of Florentine guilds and was extremely powerful and wealthy. This wealth and power was due in large part to the fact that Florence was the fabric capitol of Italy. The Baptistery was dedicated to Florence’s patron saint John the Baptist. Consequently, the first set of doors created by Andrea Pisano in 1336 depicted scenes from the life of Saint John the Baptist and was installed on the east or main entrance side. Plans for the other two sets of doors were delayed because of the economic crash, political unrest, and the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348.

In the early years of the Quattrocento, the Calimala guild decided to erect a second set of bronze doors showing scenes from the Old Testament. As with most large commissions at that time, a competition was held to find the artist who could create exactly what the guild was looking for in this work of art. Seven of the best sculptors in Tuscany were given one year to complete a panel showing the Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. However, the real competition was between Filippo Brunelleschi, the future architect of the Cathedral’s dome, and Lorenzo Ghiberti. Opposing stories state that the Calimala guild asked Brunelleschi and Ghiberti to create the panels together. Brunelleschi could not see the panels to completion because he agreed to complete another commission outside of Florence. Ghiberti claims that he won with a unanimous vote from the judges and Brunelleschi was never a part of the creation of the second set of doors. Lorenzo Ghiberti cast one en...

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...ation on the north side in 1452, when Ghiberti completed the third set of doors, “The Gates of Paradise”, the most famous of the Baptistery doors.

Works Cited

Ghiberti, Lorenzo, Gary M. Radke, and Andrew Butterfield. The Gates of paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance masterpiece. Atlanta, Ga.: High Museum of Art ;, 2007.

Hartt, Frederick, and David G. Wilkins. History of Italian Renaissance art . 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2006.

Lemaitre, Alain J., and Erich Lessing. Florence and the renaissance: the quattrocento. paris: Terrail, 1993.

Paolucci, Antonio. The origins of Renaissance art: the Baptistery doors, Florence. New York: George Braziller, 1996.

Shedd, Julia Ann Clark, and Lorenzo Ghiberti. The Ghiberti gates: an account of Lorenzo Ghiberti and the bronze doors of the baptistery at Florence. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1879