Continuing our study of Renaissance artists, we looked at the life and work of Lorenzo Ghirberti. Ghirberti was a trained goldsmith who entered a contest to design a set of doors for the Baptistry at the cathedral in Florence, Italy. His design won and he spent years completing the doors.
When Michelangelo saw the completed set, he named them the "Gates of Paradise".
The panels on the doors show scenes from the Old Testament. However, the sculpted human figures are proportional, realistic, and Classically dressed. Ghiberti, like other Renaissance artists, merged the ideas of the Medieval period (Christianity) with Greek and Roman ideas (humanism and an emphasis on the human body).
We began our project by discussing the proportions of the human body.
Students also took turns posing for one another and doing figure drawing.
We took our drawings and created scenes using textures (rice, beans, pasta, dried glue) to build images using a human figure on foam board.
We covered the foam board with foil and carefully pressed the foil around the textures until you could see the image in the foil.
Finally, we covered our foil wrapped images with India ink and used steel wool to buff away the ink from the raised places on the image.
In the end, we got some pretty cool relief sculptures!
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