Art historian Dr. Rocky Ruggiero explores degrees of relief, a prominent feature of the Italian Renaissance, and its applications to Western art and culture. Through detailed analyses of the work, artist, and historical context, viewers take away how these pieces surpass mere artistic value to become monuments of human achievement. This resource provides examples of high and low relief in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise. The gilded bronze doors, made in Florence in 1452, consist of ten panels depicting stories from the Old Testament using varying degrees of relief—the levels at which Ghiberti raises motifs from the surface of the work.