Mariä Himmelfahrt

Ghiberti is remembered for bronze, above all the Baptistery doors in Florence that Michelangelo is said to have called the Gates of Paradise. But in 1404, fresh from winning the competition for those doors, he took on something in a completely different material. He drew the design for the huge round window set over the inside of the cathedral facade, more than six metres across, showing the Virgin carried up to heaven among angels. Ghiberti supplied the drawing, and a master glazier, Niccolo di Pietro, translated it into coloured glass the following year. It was the first of a whole series of windows made from his designs for Santa Maria del Fiore. Ghiberti thought it worth recording himself, in his own memoirs written decades later.