We will look at the panels from the top left, the Creation of Man, and the
third down on the left, the Story of Joseph. The Creation of Man describes,
from left to right, the creation of Adam, the creation of Eve, and the expulsion
from the garden. Note particularly the subject of the temptation/fall in the
left background. Joseph and His Brothers depicts Joseph, the youngest of
Jacob’s sons and his favorite, and his eight jealous older brothers. One scene
shows the brothers selling Joseph into slavery.
Joseph gains fame as he serves Potiphar, an of¿ cial of Pharaoh; interprets
the Pharaoh’s dreams; and averts famine in Egypt. Famine in other countries
compelled Joseph’s brothers to come to Egypt for grain, but they did not
recognize Joseph. Joseph had a silver cup hidden in the grain sack of
Benjamin who, born after Joseph’s slavery, had
become his father’s favorite. Another scene
shows the sack being inspected. When the cup
is found, the brothers plead on Benjamin’s
behalf, and Joseph then reveals himself.
In all the panels on this set of doors, we have
seen that Ghiberti retains the medieval device
of simultaneous narration, showing a sequence
of events in the same continuous setting. This
remained fairly common in the early 15th
century. The doors, however, are in a fully
Renaissance style. This second set of doors,
known since the 16th century as the Gates of
Paradise, is one of the supreme achievements
of the early Renaissance. Instantly famous, the
doors were installed on the east side, the side facing the cathedral, causing
Ghiberti’s ¿ rst set of doors to be moved to the north side. Their name came
from Michelangelo, who was said to have remarked that they were worthy to
be the gates of paradise. The remark may have been a pun, because the piazza
between the Duomo and Baptistery was known as the Paradise, an allusion
to the salvation of the sacrament of baptism. Thus, these doors would have
been the gates to the Paradise and to Paradise itself.
The greatest
Florentine sculptor
of the 15th century,
and probably the
most inÀ uential
artist in Italy at the
time, was Donato
di Niccolò Bardi,
known as Donatello
(1386–1466).