The Representation of Vernacular Architecture in the Gates of Paradise by Lorenzo Ghiberti

Abstract

Often, artists of all time periods have unintentionally crystallized in their works the image of landscapes distant in time; of those landscapes, sometimes only faint traces remain, adding to the collection of so-called indirect sources. In many cases, a critical analysis carried out using the comparative method of those iconographic sources allows the inference of the relevant information regarding the layout of places, the structures housed there, and the practice of arts and crafts, or about customs and habits (e.g., dressing, eating, etc.); it is possible to recompose the so-called ‘buried landscapes’ by combining it with, and thanks to, the substantial contributions of other disciplines (such as history, archaeology, and anthropology). This contribution shows the first outcomes of research carried out within the Ghibertiana Project by CHMlab of DIDA (UNIFI), which aims to analyze the ‘landscape characterised by cultivated areas’ from the Florentine countryside in the early fifteenth century. In particular, it is maintained that Lorenzo Ghiberti (Pelago, 1378–Florence, 1455), just like other contemporary artists, depicted territories and architectures he had first experienced in some of the ten bronze panels of the Gates of Paradise of the Baptistery of Florence. He described in great detail the flora, fauna, and anthropic structures of the extra moenia territory. The focus of the early stage of analysis and this contribution is mainly on shelters: temporary structures functional to agricultural work. The encouraging results obtained may give rise to new research on other Florentine landscape elements artfully chiseled in Ghiberti’s workshop.

1. Introduction

From 1425 to 1452, Lorenzo Ghiberti created the ten bronze panels of the Gates of Paradise of the Florence Baptistery (Figure 1), narrating several prominent episodes from the Old Testament with the bas-relief technique.

The stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, and, finally, Solomon are narrated through up to nine scenes in the same panel juxtaposed with each other. The main purpose was to fulfil a catechetical function, namely, to convey the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

There are two relevant aspects in this artifact. Firstly, from a purely technical point of view, in the bas-reliefs, Ghiberti employs a new casting technique that allowed for the creation of thin and more easily moldable surfaces (see [1]).

Secondly, from the iconographic point of view, the work presents a marked difference from the previous production, even by the same artist. In fact, Ghiberti also realized the twenty-eight panels of the second door (1403–1424) of the Baptistery1, representing the Stories from the Life of Christ. Ghiberti introduced an innovative feature in the third door (the Door of Paradise). This feature marked the transition from medieval to Renaissance art [3] (pp. 298–305), as defined in historical art circles: the Stories are set in a background of landscapes, both in urban and in rural scenarios. In the fifth, sixth, and tenth panels, the scenery, skillfully depicted in perspective, consists of monumental architectures of classical inspiration, while in the second, third, fourth, seventh, and eighth panels, Ghiberti depicts constructions related to the rural tradition.

Edoardo Villata remarks that the ‘landscape’ seems “to have developed in the visual and critical consciousness of painters and figurative arts enthusiasts in Italy in the fifteenth century […] using the ‘legitimate construction’ […] as an illusory means, or vice versa of topographical documentation” [4] (p. 89).

Ghiberti depicted with an unusual abundance of detail all the structures found in the city environment, such as buildings, walls, and towers, as well as in those characterizing the rural environment, tree and plant species, shelters, agricultural implements, and animals. It is likely that he drew not only on widespread iconographies and models in art workshops, but primarily on those elements he personally knew, which were linked to the places of his childhood and adolescence spent in the hills between the Sieve and the Arno, and in his adoptive city: Florence.

Ghiberti, in fact, unlike most of his peers, spent almost his entire life in his native lands. Richard Krautheimer [5] (p. 16) points out in this regard how the master left Florence only twice; firstly, he left for Pesaro to follow a painter. Secondly, he went to Siena to work on the baptismal font in the Cathedral, but in both cases, his stays were brief.

The use of repertoires and figurative models inspired by the classical world is widely established during the Renaissance period [6] (p. 167); however, the practice of drawing from real life allowed young artists not only to practice their art, but to analyze their surroundings [7] (p. 14). Thanks in part to the use of optics first, and geometry later [4], their works were inevitably marked by such a realism that was never achieved before. In this regard, Leon Battista Alberti, in ‘De Pictura—Liber III’, claimed: “those who often take inspiration from nature in whatever they do, will have their hand so trained that whatever they do, it will be drawn from nature itself” [8] (p. 98), a concept also maintained by Lorenzo Ghiberti in ‘I commentarii’ [9] (p. 47).

Giuseppina Carla Romby is carrying out the first interesting attempt to recount the anthropic structures modeled by Ghiberti to the buildings found in Florence in the years he was working on the panels [forthcoming]. Instead, this contribution focuses on the ‘landscape characterised by cultivated areas’2 [10] (p. 182) and, in particular, on the widespread presence of temporary structures useful for agricultural work, such as huts, tents, and pergolas.

It is worth remembering that at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century, all around the Tuscan countryside, and in particular in the territories bordering Florence that during the fourteenth century had expanded far beyond the boundaries of its ancient countryside [11], a gradual decline in feudalism and its centuries-old practice of exploiting extra moenia territories took place, which was prematurely replaced by sharecropping systems [12].

The mainly wooded territory was dotted with castles, territories belonging to the parishes, parishes, and towers. These belonged to the feudal nobility, and by then became part of the estates of the wealthiest Florentine bourgeois families, or the ecclesiastical lordships of the cities of Florence and Fiesole, or other religious bodies. The Florentine cadastres also reveal a dense network of ‘worker’s houses’ together with ‘master’s houses’ and ‘lord’s houses’; the latter offered to the minor and major bourgeois landowners the possibility to control the operations of the agricultural year on site, as well as the benefits of a summer holiday location [13] (p. 902).

The landscape that young Ghiberti probably saw was, therefore, characterized by the prolonged confrontation between the great feudality that reigned for centuries in the countryside and the new bourgeois class in a ‘dominant’ Florentia.

2. Materials and Methods

The analysis of the potential of artworks as a source for understanding landscape evolution does not constitute in itself an innovative and unprecedented element. The conception of the work of art as a historical source, considered an important achievement in the historiographical revolution that affected the last century, elevates artistic representation to a higher level in the process of knowledge formation, attributing to it proving value in the depiction of scenarios [14]3. The importance of this assumption is evidenced, for example, by the fundamental contribution of Frederick Antal [19] in his reading of the territory of the Florentine countryside through its main works of art and by the equally important work of Arnold Hauser [20], up to the more recent work of Peter Burke [21].

The research4 regarding the ‘landscape characterised by cultivated areas’ in the Florentine countryside of the early fifteenth century was conducted using two separate types of sources: iconographic (indirect) and literary (direct) [22] (pp. 447–462). Contrary to the norm, the latter was used to confirm the reliability of the former (and not vice versa), which offers a repertoire of images that allow envisioning the landscape analyzed with immediacy as it uses mostly a visual language. In this specific case, it was the descriptive cadastre promulgated by law of the Republic of Florence on 22 May 1427 that represented the literary source. This confirmed what was depicted by the artists, thus confirming the presence of structures to support agricultural work scattered throughout the territory.

Finally, previous studies on Italian rural architecture and, in particular, by those conducted on the Florentine area were the fundamental contribution to this research. They described some of the artifacts depicted by the fifteenth-century artists as ‘dwelling archetypes,’ attributing to them a specific symbolic value.

2.1. Works of Art as Tools to Understand the Historical Landscape

While attempting to infer the vernacular structures that characterized the Florentine countryside in the early fifteenth century, and in particular to verify the presence of temporary architectures used by the men in their work life, we turned to the painters and goldsmith sculptors and their works that immortalized them.

In art history, iconography analyzes “the graphic and compositional elements of any work of art with the intention of grasping its specific meanings, derivations, lasting elements and mutations, often allowing a definite knowledge of the subjects, to grasp unexpected relationships between the work of art and its contemporary culture, to indicate those factors that might have affected the deep traits of the style” [23]. This discipline therefore links the artistic artifact to its historical and cultural context and, at the same time, establishes a connection with the signifier [24] of the elements represented, charging the work with a semiotic and hermeneutic value [25].

It was not uncommon, especially for Ghiberti’s contemporary artists, to set episodes that took place elsewhere and in previous eras in contexts known to them and in the time in which they worked.

Painters like Giotto di Bondone (Colle di Vespignano Vicchio, 1267–Florence, 1337) and Simone Martini (Siena, 1284–Avignon, 1344) from the previous century included architectural structures and references to a recognizable natural or anthropic environment in their religious-themed paintings; these were, however, unrelated to the episodes depicted and closer to architectural structures and places that were known to the artists. The reference to Tuscan cities and countryside in these works is clear in the comparison with the shape of the plant arrangements and built elements, also depicted in paintings by contemporary artists, with the clear purpose of representing the territory. The case of the fresco ‘Allegory of the Effects of Good Government in the Countryside’ (Figure 2) by the painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Siena, 1290–1348) is emblematic, where the rows, fields, and trees follow the hills and are spaced by farms, churches, and castles that can be glimpsed in the distance, thus describing a rich and heterogeneous anthropized landscape, and in the center of it, there is a complex of farmhouses and a rectangular thatched hut with a strong symbolic character.

The artists of the early fifteenth century were able to depict the extra moenia territory in great detail and closely to the perceived reality thanks to the definition and application of new knowledge in the field of representation. This symbolically dense background can be identified in portraits and narrative episodes5, where there is a shift from a simplified depiction of landscapes to a scientific one [26]; among the best-known examples in painting are the works of Domenico Veneziano (Venice, 1410–Florence, 1461) and Paolo Uccello (Pratovecchio, 1397–Florence, 1475), as well as in those of Benozzo Gozzoli (Scandicci, 1420–Pistoia, 1497) and Beato Angelico (Vicchio, 1395–Rome, 1445).

While comparing these works, it becomes evident that setting the episodes in landscape settings known to the artist was an established and widespread practice, both if the event depicted actually took place there, as in the ‘Battle of San Romano’ by Paolo Uccello (1435–1440) (Figure 3), and in the case where the events narrated belonged to distant times and places, as in the frescoes of the ‘Magi Chapel’ by Benozzo Gozzoli (1459–1460) (Figure 4) or the ‘Visitation’ by Beato Angelico (1430) (Figure 5). Gozzoli depicts the Tuscan landscape in his work, certainly a familiar sight to his patrons, while Angelico recreates a detailed and recognizable view of Lake Trasimeno behind the Virgin and St. Elizabeth.

Finally, in ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ by (1439–1441) (Figure 6), the identifying elements of the rural area emerge strongly enough to balance the richness of the procession depicted in the foreground. In the foreground, there is a shelter shaped according to the local tradition: a structure of rectangular layout with four wooden posts at the vertices that support, by means of a fork, the gabled roof structure with thatched roofing.

The analysis of these paintings offers a sharp image of the historical landscape of the time, the same experienced and represented by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the panels of the Gates of Paradise in the Florence Baptistery.

2.2. The 1427 Florentine Cadastre

The Florentine Cadastre was established by decree by the Republic of Florence on 22 May 1427. It contains the ‘portate’, the list of both real estate property and the income deriving from the real estate6. It was compiled as a result of the declarations made by all Florentine citizens, the countryside, and the district inhabitants. The distinctive feature of this tax census concerned both the identification and assessment of the wealth deriving from real estate and the new obligation to participate for those social categories that were previously exempted, such as religious figures.

These registers have been studied extensively [28,29]; the main objectives were defining the territory distribution, identifying the exact location of the lands of the most important families, analyzing the settling or toponymy, etc. The document is, indeed, a substantial source of data useful for multiple analyses7.

For the purposes of the research on the ‘landscape characterised by cultivated areas’, the statements regarding the real estate in the countryside were made possible by the unsurpassed work conducted by Paolo Pirillo [31] and used as a basis. This allowed the inference of the typology and number of the artifacts found in the Florentine countryside in the first decades of the 15th century8.

In fact, in their declarations, every taxpayer was obliged to disclose all the goods that were not directly subject to taxation, such as huts and pergolas, regardless of their condition.

The ’agrarian landscape’ that came to light is strongly shaped by human labor, especially in the hilly areas, where the houses were scattered along the fields and flanked the earlier settlement forms typical from the early medieval period and the more imposing lord’s houses, i.e., the dwellings that town owners built on their estates in this period in order to enjoy the pleasures of the countryside and at the same time supervise the peasant employees. Farmhouses were usually modestly sized dwellings, divided into three or four rooms and with numerous service facilities, including stables, barns, ovens, and wells, as well as temporary structures such as sheds and canopies.

2.3. Previous Research on Italian Rural Architecture

The ‘Inchiesta agraria e sulle condizioni della classe agricola in Italia’ (Inquiry regarding the agricultural situation and the conditions of the agricultural class in Italy, Jacini Inquiry, 1877–1884) started the long and fruitful period of study on Italian rural architecture. This was conducted for the first time on the newly unified national territory and aimed to highlight the situation of properties, characteristics of production, and conditions of workers [34]; it also had the undeniable merit of portraying a complex and heterogeneous system of agrarian management strongly linked to the architectural structures commonly found on the territory.

An event worth mentioning from the following period is the ‘Mostra di etnografia italiana’ (Exhibition of Italian Ethnography) of 1911, curated by Lamberto Loria (Alexandria, Egypt, 1855–Rome, 1913) in collaboration with Gustavo Giovannoni (Rome, 1873–1947) and Marcello Piacentini (Rome, 1881–1960), and ten years later, ‘L’architettura rustica’ (Rural architecture), organized in Rome by Marcello Piacentini, Gustavo Giovannoni, and Vittorio Ballio-Morpurgo (Rome, 1890–1966), whose findings are collected in Giulio Ferrari’s ‘L’architettura rusticana nell’arte italiana’ (Rural architecture in Italian art) of 1925 [35].

The volume ‘Architettura rurale in Italia’ (Rural Architecture in Italy) [36], encapsulating the results of research that flowed into an exhibition held at the ‘Triennale di Venezia’ in 1936, Giuseppe Pagano (Parenzo, 1896–Mauthausen, 1945) and Guarniero (Werner) Daniel, offered a new stimulus for the study of those artifacts populating the peninsula countryside, and producing over time results of great importance [37,38,39].

For example, during the following year, the ‘Mostra della Casa rurale toscana’ (Exhibition of the rural Tuscan house) organized by geographer Renato Biasutti (San Daniele del Friuli 1878–Florence 1965) collected the outcome of an important study conducted on the regional agricultural territory. The results obtained were organized and summarized, and subsequently published in 1938 in the volume ‘La casa rurale nella Toscana’ (The rural house in Tuscany) [40].

In the post-World War II period, the interest in vernacular architecture never faded entirely, as witnessed by the exhibitions ‘Architettura spontanea’ (Spontaneous Architecture in 1951 curated by Ezio Cerruti, Giancarlo De Carlo, and Giuseppe Samonà as part of the IX Triennale di Milano) and ‘Architecture without Architects’ (organized at MoMA in New York in 1964 by Bernard Rudofsky), until the more recent ICOMOS ‘Charter on the Built Vernacular Heritage’ of 19999 [41].

While attempting to reconstruct the phases that lead from the hut to the farmhouse, the authors cited so far agree that as agricultural crops and/or economic and technical conditions changed, some of them went almost completely missing. However, traces of their memory can still be found in the barns, tool shelters, and temporary dwellings used during the work in the fields in summer and autumn [36] (p. 14) (Figure 7).

Therefore, the theme of shelter in architecture can be considered as old as architecture itself; its birth can in fact be traced back to the design act triggered by the human need for shelter and protection. Although we would have to wait centuries for the transition from occasional shelters, typical of nomadic people, to the creation of permanent solutions in settled societies, it is still possible to state that “the primitive settlement act that culturally defines the relationship between man and nature it is historically represented by two archetypes: the cave and the hut (or tent)” [42,43]. From these solutions were derived the two main building models, “on the one hand, architecture aimed at the mass, to offer stability and continuity, and on the other, a kind of architecture that offered transparent, light and temporary solutions” [43], still dominant in every act of building in all its most contemporary forms.

In the rural environment, unlike the urban areas10, the mutation of models and shapes has been slower, thanks to the substantial continuity of functions and production systems over the centuries, as well as the spread of vernacular buildings over a wide territory. For this reason, the agrarian landscape allows identifying in its built forms the closest testament to the archetype, while respecting the balance between the natural and man-made ecosystem.

The possible connection between the rural landscapes modeled by the human presence and those represented by Ghiberti (the landscapes of the art) in the panels of the gates allows the reading–interpretation of the characteristics of the Florentine countryside at the beginning of the 15th century and, for the purpose of this contribution, the presence of living archetypes that distinguished it [44].

3. Results

Among the variety of architectures depicted in the Gates of Paradise, every declination of the hut and the tent is repeated in the depiction of the extra moenia landscapes, i.e., the scenes set outside of an urban context.

These archetypes characterized the modus habitandi of primitive societies, and to this day identify the way of living of less-evolved societies [38]; however, they have been employed over time to serve distinct functions. As far as the Tuscan countryside, it is still possible to recognize them today where they serve purposes related to temporary shelter and to store tools or fruits of the land.

3.1. The Landscape of the Art by Lorenzo Ghiberti

Ghiberti’s high reliefs seem to accurately describe the temporary structures serving workers in the countryside, which in this text have been identified with housing archetypes, found in Valdisieve in the early fifteenth century.

The scenes in the second, third, fourth, seventh, and eighth panels (sometimes up to nine events in the same square) are depicted against a background of landscapes that recall the area where the master was born and invested part of his fortune in land and farms. The depiction of the cultivated land, characterized by the presence of grains and tree species, in particular fruit trees, vines, and olive trees, is combined with the images of light structures and shelters, used either by the farmers (cf. ‘Stories of Cain and Abel’ and ‘Stories of Noah’) and as temporary dwellings (cf. ‘Stories of Moses’ and ‘Stories of Joshua’). In this way, the master goldsmith sculptor, while depicting biblical episodes set in decidedly different eras, embeds in his work a truthful and detailed snapshot of the contemporary agrarian landscape, providing a rare depiction of these architectural structures, commonly considered ‘minor’ if compared to well-known monumental buildings, and less frequently found in the pictorial and sculptural production of artists of the same period.

3.2. The Hut as Housing Archetype

In The Story of Cain and Abel (second square—Figure 8), the first scene depicts the progenitors sitting in front of their circular hut, a construction made of wooden poles and reeds, covered with a thatched roof supported by poles placed radially, in turn sustained by a central support, as the top would show.

The circular form is the oldest in the history of human dwelling places. The primitive hut does not yet have perimeter walls; it only has a roof that starts directly from the ground. The need to exploit every interior part and the desire to use all the blind spots, created by the intersection of roof and base, elicited the solution of raising the roof off the ground. In the case under consideration, the walls are not yet perfectly vertical and form an interrupted truncated cone, roughly the height of an average man; the skeletal structure, similar to that of the roof, is filled with canes regularly arranged in a vertical position and secured to the structure using wicker ties. The slope of the roof, the same as in Nordic countries, is the logical consequence of the use of straw, which requires very steep pitches to prevent water from penetrating inside.

The hut is still common today in eastern Mugello and Valdisieve (municipalities of Vicchio, Dicomano, San Godenzo, Rufina, Londa), in the Tuscan Val Tiberina, in the Casentino, excluding the mountains, in the Val di Chiana and throughout the region, and in the southern area of the Ombrone, excluding the Maremma. More generally, its structure is similar to the cylindrical–conical huts with a central pole found throughout the sub-Apennines area, on both sides of the ridge; this construction involves a wooden structure of poles driven into the ground along the circular perimeter, subsequently filled in with reeds, branches, and straw with horizontal circles of branches. The central post with a fork termination constitutes the support for the roof beams, with a secondary frame in rafters to which the roof fronds are fixed [45] (Figure 9).

In the lower left corner of the panel relating to the ‘Stories of Cain and Abel’, the presence of a pair of oxen at the yoke pulling a wooden plough, widespread in the Florentine countryside and often depicted in contemporary paintings [see Virgilio Riccardiano] (Figure 10), confirms the hypothesis that the events take place against the background of a landscape contemporary to the artist.

The hut depicted in the foreground of ‘Stories of Noah’ (third square—Figure 11), on the other hand, has a rectangular plan and a double-pitched roof with a wooden structure and a reed covering supported by pillars with two-part ends.

Even though it is a simple shelter, the type of roofing demonstrates a certain constructional skill; in order to realize the double frame, arranging the various elements with a certain regularity that, for example, the four-pitch roof does not require is indispensable [38].

A vine-covered pergola, also rectangular in shape, is placed next to the shelter, a very common construction in the Tuscan agricultural landscape. In the Florentine land registers from 1427, the presence of pergolas and rushes (perghole e channeti) within the vine-covered pieces of land (pezzi di terra vignata) [33] (pp. 16–27) that characterized the Florentine countryside then, and that still do, is often mentioned.

3.3. The Tent as Iconographic Paradigm

The theme of the tent—traditionally linked to nomadism or, in some cases, to the temporary nature of living—is depicted in the fourth, seventh, and eighth squares.

If analyzed in relation to the forms of vernacular architecture, tents share the same structure with huts and differ from them only in their covering, which in the former is characterized not only by its greater value, but also by the fact that it can be reused several times to cover the same structure, after it has been moved or built from scratch, with the same shape and size.

In the panel of the ‘Stories of Abraham’ (fourth square—Figure 12), a single tent is depicted near the left margin, which is where the prophet and his wife Sarah live. It is not a temporary shelter, but a real dwelling with attention to the smallest details and richly decorated, despite representing their nomadic life. In this case, the wooden structure supports a heavy fabric that has been cut and sewn on the roof to support its conical shape.

In the ‘Stories of Moses’ (seventh square—Figure 13), Ghiberti depicts on the left side of the panel the camp that the people of Israel set up at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they arrived after crossing the Red Sea. In this case, there are five tents, three circular and two rectangular, alternating with each other. The structure is covered with fabric and, only in one case, is it supported by ropes that act as tie rods, which extend from the roof to the ground. At the top, there is a sphere, a reminder of the tufts of straw that in ancient times protected the tips of the poles, but since having lost their function have an eminently decorative value.

The same two types of tents are depicted in ‘Stories of Joshua’ (eight square—Figure 14); this panel shows twelve artefacts (the same number as the tribes of Israel), ten circular and two rectangular, which were part of the camp erected in Gilgal near the city of Jericho.

There is no direct or indirect evidence of the use of tents in the Tuscan countryside in the early 15th century, at least not for agricultural or forestry purposes. On the contrary, these artefacts are often encountered in paintings depicting battles, in this case with the function of temporary accommodation for troops and nobles, or in scenes of idleness in the countryside (Figure 15); the best-known contemporary work in which a curtain is depicted is likely to be Piero della Francesca’s ’La Madonna del parto’ (Borgo Sansepolcro, 1412–1492, Figure 16).

It is likely, therefore, that in this case, Ghiberti used a known and shared figurative code, which made it possible to grasp its symbolic value (the temporary accommodation) independently of having a direct knowledge of the depicted object.

The persistence of this representational paradigm is testified by the repetition of the same reference in later works, such as the fresco in the Sala di Clemente VII in Palazzo Vecchio depicting the Siege of Florence (1529–1530) by Giovanni Stradano (Bruges, 1523–Florence, 1605), in which the troops stationed outside the City of the Lily are organized in a multitude of light structures surrounding the city walls (Figure 17).

4. Discussion

CHMlab researchers carried out an in-depth analysis of the works of artists living in the same period as Ghiberti and of the 1427 Florentine Cadastre, a written source that restores a reliable cross-section of the countryside of Florence. The aim was to identify if the objects chiseled by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the ten panels of the Gates of Paradise could constitute a useful reference for defining a scientifically documented image of the landscape of the Florentine countryside in the early 15th century.

The study focused, in particular, on the hut and the tent, two artifacts found in more than one panel. If the data deduced from the cadastral data confirm an articulated landscape in which numerous artifacts coexist, including huts (capanna in columpnis, capanna coperta paleis) and pergolas; on the other hand, tents are not mentioned, presumably because of their temporary nature that did not need to be reported. The comparative analysis conducted on the works of painters and sculptors has allowed the association of shapes and colourscolors with these descriptions, albeit transfigured through the language of art. The latter also made it possible to confirm the presence of tents in the countryside. It would have been possible, but not deemed essential for the purpose of this research, to also conduct a comparative study on the literary sources, which are copious for the period analyzed, and could have provided additional information.

Finally, studies conducted on Italian rural architecture in the first half of the last century have made it possible to attribute to the hut and the tent a symbolic value that, at least in part, transcends the one attributed by Christianity, considering these two artifacts as housing archetypes.

5. Conclusions

Works of art generally constitute an invaluable iconographic source, which in many cases enables us to grasp the identity of landscapes that took shape in distant times. The study of paintings, supported by the study of other available sources, is probably the most effective method to document the origins of the past rural landscape. In this regard, in fact, Emilio Sereni’s studies are famous; he considered the analysis of the landscape depicted in various works of art at different times to be the best path for the reconstruction of the history of agriculture [46] (pp. 111–112).

The same operation had never been attempted when analyzing the panels of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, which set the most salient events of the Old Testament in landscapes that closely resemble the same Florentine countryside where he spent his time. Once it is accepted that, in these works, the master deliberately depicted the landscapes and the architecture style that were contemporary to him and interpreted them according to the language of art, the analysis of the traditional forms of housing clearly reveals a countryside that is by now “domesticated”, populated by both temporary and permanent structures, functional for the work in the fields and pastures, which will remain almost unchanged until the first decades of the twentieth century, and which an attentive eye is still able to discern today.

Therefore, the panels can be considered an unprecedented source for the analysis of the salient features of the rural landscape surrounding the Tuscan capital. From this point of view, the study of the other elements depicted in Ghiberti’s work, such as the arboreal or herbaceous component, will be able to contribute to the definition of a comprehensive picture of the Florentine countryside in the early fifteenth century.