Art by Ghiberti

Lorenzo Ghiberti won a fiercely contested 1401 competition, beating out a young Filippo Brunelleschi, to design a new set of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, a commission that ended up consuming much of his working life. The second set of doors, later nicknamed the "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo himself, took him 27 years to complete, cast in gilded bronze relief panels depicting Old Testament scenes with a depth and complexity that pushed sculpture toward something closer to painting. The doors were significant enough to the city that replicas now stand in their place at the Baptistery, with the fragile originals preserved indoors at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.