Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise

1425 – 1452 CE

Michelangelo likened the gilded bronze doors of Florence’s Baptistery of San Giovanni to the “Gates of Paradise.” The phrase stuck, for reasons that anyone who has seen them will understand. Combining a goldsmith’s delicacy with a foundryman’s bravura, sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti condensed the Old Testament into ten panels to produce one of the defining masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Since their installation in 1452, the doors have withstood a variety of near-biblical catastrophes: a torrential flood, vandalism, overzealous polishing and caustic air pollution.