Ghiberti's story of St. Joseph with it's intricate carvings, simulate the sensory overload of the earth. Simply the amount of textures and sight are enough to over load the mind when focused on for too long. The mastery of it all is however, is not what Ghiberti sculpted, it is what he didn't sculpt that make it all the more impressive. Ghiberti draws the spectator in, causing the watcher to start filling in details that aren't actually there. Ghiberti is causing our own experience in the world around us, to literally color in and fill the image with life of it's own. The simple yet complex manipulation of the mind by making it create a unique image from our own contact with the secular world truly makes this piece one based in the secularism of the renaissance world.
Ghiberti's Saul and David demonstrates the chaos and danger that plagued renaissance Italy at the time. He is showing how bloody and dirty the familys in power made it for the people as they fought for control over each other. However there is a figure placed slightly left of center that is winning the battle, showing the power, riches, and glory an individual can wield once in control of these other families. It speaks to the individualism the patrons wanted at the time, while still demonstrating Ghiberti's protest toward the innocents that are caught in the way.
Ghiberti's St. Matthew shows the individualism of St. Mathew's life. He was so well accomplished in his dealings with Jesus and his subsequent chronicles of Jesus, that he is held in one of the highest honors. Ghiberti displays St. Mathew's importance over other men through his dealings with Christ and his writings on the experience that few men can even hold a candle to his achievements. The literal raised status and the fact that he holds a bundle of his writings in his hand marks him as on of the most important literary producers of all time. Ghiberti shows his larger than life achievement by depicting him as he was in life, alone writing a book that would become one of the most important accomplishments of all time.
Ghiberti's St. John the Baptist is an immortalization of a individually important man in the humanist style of sculpting. The individual is standing solo on a pedestal set high of the ground, symbolically showing St. John the Baptists elevated status among men. His human form is displayed as larger than life, with his sculpted robes to add to his physical form. Ghiberti uses the robes as an extension of the saint's own form, making him appear that much more important by showing how powerful his body is using the robes as almost extensions of his own limbs. The individual is represented as being accomplished and better than those who walk under him, while Ghiberti uses the robes, which usually hide the human form, as an extension of the saint making him that much more beautiful.