Lorenzo Ghiberti

Lorenzo Ghiberti was the most triumphant "competition junkie" and ultimate bronze sculptor of 15th-century Florence. His visual language can be described as "painting a bottomless abyss on a frying pan"—he deployed a terrifying black magic called "rilievo schiacciato (flattened relief)" to create infinitely receding, sprawling architecture and landscapes on a sheet of brass only a few centimeters thick, purely through blurring depth of field. He was absolutely not a tragic, starving artist; quite the opposite, he was a shrewd, hyper-diplomatic commercial prodigy who ran the largest, most domineering all-star sculpture workshop in Florence. Even rebellious young titan geniuses like Donatello ground their teeth working as his underlings. The most legendary victory of his life was narrowly defeating the arrogant Brunelleschi in the brutal design competition famously dubbed "the curtain-raiser of the Renaissance." From that moment, he spent fifty brutal years obsessively completing two massive bronze doors, permanently catapulting himself into the pantheon of gods.