He was one of the artists who opened the door to Italian Renaissance sculpture. Younger than Brunelleschi, but older than Masaccio and Donatello (his teacher), yet his works lacked the humanistic spirit found in theirs. His early works were within the International Gothic style, only gradually liberating themselves from Gothic forms after 1420 into a steady, powerful naturalistic realism. His most representative masterpiece is the three sets of bronze relief doors on the Florence Baptistery—the Gates of Paradise. (Reference: Lion Encyclopedia of Western Art) In this way, he deeply influenced the younger generation of sculptors, Donatello (his student), and later Michelangelo, down to the French sculptor Rodin in the nineteenth century.