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

<p>Lorenzo Ghiberti's unfinished Commentaries is the earliest surviving writing by a great artist about the</p><p>principles and goals of art about his own art and about the attributes and means necessary for the artist to</p><p>produce excellent art.</p><p>Part I of this study reevaluates the character and purpose of Ghiberti's book and examines its content</p><p>structure and organization sources dating literary quality and style and its place in the literature of</p><p>Italian art. It describes each of the book's three commentaries and shows how they are interrelated and</p><p>together form a coherent whole. It discusses Ghiberti's deliberate selection of the excerpts from Latin</p><p>ancient and medieval texts that comprise most of the first and third commentaries and his selection of the</p><p>artists and works recorded in the second commentary and it explores the rationale behind these choices. </p><p>While all three commentaries contribute to understanding Ghiberti's interests and intent the second</p><p>commentary is the fulcrum of his book and can be fully appreciated only in the context of his writing as a</p><p>whole. At the same time it is important in its own right as a key source of information on late thirteenth-</p><p>and fourteenth-century Tuscan and Roman painting and sculpture and Ghiberti's art. Unlike the poorly</p><p>translated defective and often incomprehensible excerpts in the first and third commentaries the second</p><p>commentary was written almost entirely in Ghiberti's own words and is easily understood.</p><p> Part II presents a new transcription and annotated English translation of this primary document for the</p><p>history of early Renaissance art and the history of art criticism.</p>