Orcagna in the context of "Catholic moral theology"

Gold ground (both a noun and adjective) or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious appearance. The style has been used in several periods and places, but is especially associated with Byzantine and medieval art in mosaic, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, where it was for many centuries the dominant style for some types of images, such as icons. For three-dimensional objects, the term is gilded or gold-plated.

Gold in mosaic began in Roman mosaics around the 1st century AD, and originally was used for details and had no particular religious connotation, but in Early Christian art it came to be regarded as very suitable for representing Christian religious figures, highlighting them against a plain but glistering background that might be read as representing heaven, or a less specific spiritual plane. Full-length figures often stand on more naturalistically coloured ground, with the sky in gold, but some are shown fully surrounded by gold. The style could not be used in fresco, but was adapted very successfully for miniatures in manuscripts and the increasingly important portable icons on wood. In all of these the style required a good deal of extra skilled work, but because of the extreme thinness of the gold leaf used, the cost of the gold bullion used was relatively low; lapis lazuli blue seems to have been at least as expensive to use.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by the north, above all by Florence. This was especially the case in the quattrocento (15th century), after which Rome came to equal or exceed it as a centre, though producing few sculptors itself. Major Florentine sculptors in stone included (in rough chronological order, with dates of death) Orcagna (1368), Nanni di Banco (1421), Filippo Brunelleschi (1446), Nanni di Bartolo (1451), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1455), Donatello (1466), Bernardo (1464) and his brother Antonio Rossellino (1479), Andrea del Verrocchio (1488), Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1498), Michelangelo (1564), and Jacopo Sansovino (1570). Elsewhere there was the Siennese Jacopo della Quercia (1438), from Lombardy Pietro Lombardo (1515) and his sons, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1522), Andrea Sansovino (1529), Vincenzo Danti (1576), Leone Leoni (1590), and Giambologna (1608, born in Flanders).

Orsanmichele, Or San Michele or Orsammichele (pronounced [orsammiˈkɛːle]; from the Tuscan contraction of Orto di San Michele, "orchard" or "kitchen garden of Saint Michael") is a communal building and church in the Italian city of Florence. Its uniqueness as an architectural construction lies not only in its multifunctionality as grain market, granary and oratory. The tabernacle by Orcagna, called the high point of Italian Gothic sculpture, and the sculptural program running around all four façades, depicting the patron saints of the major Florentine guilds, are extraordinary. It encompasses several firsts in marble and bronze, and lasting masterpieces of the Early Renaissance by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello and Nanni di Banco.