Florence Baptistery in the context of "Lorenzo Ghiberti"

Florence Cathedral (Italian: Duomo di Firenze), formally the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower (Italian: Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore [katteˈdraːle di ˈsanta maˈriːa del ˈfjoːre]), is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Florence in Florence, Italy. Commenced in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed by 1436 with a dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi, the basilica's exterior is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink, alternated by white, and features an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival western façade by Emilio De Fabris.

The cathedral complex, in Piazza del Duomo, includes the Florence Baptistery and Giotto's Campanile. These three buildings are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site covering the historic centre of Florence and are a major tourist attraction of Tuscany. The basilica is one of world's largest churches and its dome is still the largest masonry dome ever constructed. The cathedral is the mother church and seat of the Archdiocese of Florence, whose archbishop is Gherardo Gambelli.

A roof lantern is a daylighting architectural element. Architectural lanterns are part of a larger roof and provide natural light into the space or room below. In contemporary use it is an architectural skylight structure.

A lantern roof will generally mean just the roof of a lantern structure in the West, but has a special meaning in Indian architecture (mostly Buddhist, and stretching into Central Asia and eastern China), where it means a dome-like roof raised by sets of four straight beams placed above each other, "arranged in diminishing squares", and rotated with each set. Normally such a "lantern" is enclosed and provides no light at all.

Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevare, to raise (lit. 'to lift back'). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. When a relief is carved into a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving), the field is actually lowered, leaving the unsculpted areas seeming higher. The approach requires chiselling away of the background, which can be time-intensive. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, particularly in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mâché the form can be simply added to or raised up from the background. Monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian and French terms are still sometimes used in English. The full range includes high relief (Italian alto-rilievo, French haut-relief), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (Italian mezzo-rilievo), low relief (Italian basso-rilievo, French: bas-relief), and shallow-relief (Italian rilievo schiacciato), where the plane is only very slightly lower than the sculpted elements. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt (see below). However, the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work.

The North Doors of the Florence Baptistery were made by Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1403 and 1424 and represent his first masterpiece, before the celebrated Gates of Paradise. The work is signed in the center, above the panels of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi: “OPVS LAUREN/TII•FLOREN/TINI.” After restoration in 2013-2015 (during which much of the original gilding was restored) the doors were displayed in the new Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and replaced by a copy.