Lorenzo Ghiberti's Second Commentary in Context, with a New Transcription, English Translation, and Commentary

Lorenzo Ghiberti's unfinished Commentaries is the earliest surviving writing by a great artist about the

principles and goals of art, about his own art, and about the attributes and means necessary for the artist to

produce excellent art.

Part I of this study reevaluates the character and purpose of Ghiberti's book and examines its content,

structure and organization, sources, dating, literary quality and style, and its place in the literature of

Italian art. It describes each of the book's three commentaries and shows how they are interrelated and

together form a coherent whole. It discusses Ghiberti's deliberate selection of the excerpts from Latin

ancient and medieval texts that comprise most of the first and third commentaries and his selection of the

artists and works recorded in the second commentary, and it explores the rationale behind these choices.

While all three commentaries contribute to understanding Ghiberti's interests and intent, the second

commentary is the fulcrum of his book and can be fully appreciated only in the context of his writing as a

whole. At the same time, it is important in its own right as a key source of information on late thirteenth-

and fourteenth-century Tuscan and Roman painting and sculpture and Ghiberti's art. Unlike the poorly

translated, defective, and often incomprehensible excerpts in the first and third commentaries, the second

commentary was written almost entirely in Ghiberti's own words and is easily understood.

Part II presents a new transcription and annotated English translation of this primary document for the

history of early Renaissance art and the history of art criticism.