Sculpture and Subject

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Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise and Michelangelo’s David have many things in common besides their elevated status in the canon of Western art, paradigms of the early and ‘High’ Renaissance respectively, and each provides the subject of two recent monographs by Amy Bloch and John Paoletti that, like their chosen protagonists, share a number of themes. About half a century apart in their completion, both were commissioned to occupy a position in the immediate vicinity of Florence’s cathedral. The Gates and the David were part of the city’s public sphere and were viewed daily by many – the latter sculpture ultimately being placed on the Piazza della Signoria – until the originals were moved to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo and the Accademia, and replaced by copies. Sculpted by two leading artists who each left a literary legacy that reflects on their artistic production, both present an Old Testament subject, with the young King of Israel even appearing in the ninth of Ghiberti’s ten bronze panels, in the midst of decapitating the Philistine giant Goliath. In disparate ways, these two works of sculpture explore the possibilities in depicting the human body and subject.