The Binding of Isaac in the Hands of Two Florentine Christian Artists

It all began with a competition. When Florence’s corporation of wool merchants—one of the city’s seven “great guilds” —undertook in 1400 to commission a new set of monumental bronze doors for the Baptistery of Saint John, it set out to find the best artist for the job. Seven of the most highly regarded sculptors in Tuscany were recruited for the coveted task: to produce, within one year, a sculptural relief of the Binding of Isaac. The results would be judged by a panel of 34 experts, including specialists in sculpture and the visual arts.

Some 625 years later, visitors to the Bargello National Museum, Florence’s premier repository of Renaissance sculpture, can compare for themselves the two finalists, and the only entries preserved to this day. These striking works, by Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi, reflect two dramatically different interpretations of the moment when the Lord’s messenger stops Abraham from sacrificing his son, as well as distinct approaches to the making of art.