Assumption of the Virgin

Lorenzo Ghiberti's Assumption of the Virgin, associated with Florence Cathedral and dated around 1404, demonstrates the great sculptor's engagement with painting alongside his famous bronze reliefs. Ghiberti is celebrated above all for the baptistery doors in Florence — Michelangelo called the second pair the Gates of Paradise — but he worked across media in the early Renaissance tradition. The Assumption of the Virgin, depicting Mary being carried bodily into heaven attended by angels, was among the most popular subjects in late medieval and early Renaissance devotional art. The panel belongs to the period when Ghiberti was at the center of Florence's artistic revolution alongside Brunelleschi and Donatello.

Ghiberti employs the gold ground of the late Gothic tradition while introducing a new three-dimensionality in the figures, anticipating the spatial depth he would achieve in his bronze reliefs. The Virgin's form is modeled with soft, rounded contours. Angels are arranged in overlapping groups that create a sense of heavenly volume and movement.