rarer achievements) being the first sculptor since antiquity to place a statue on a pedestal around which observers could walk; Masaccio being the first painter to make pictures in the modern use of the term, with men and women of flesh and blood in them, as distinguished from decorative saints, and to be by example the instructor of all the greatest masters, from his pupil Lippo Lippi to Leonardo and Michelangelo; and Luca della Robbia being the inspired discoverer of an inexpensive means of glazing terra-cotta so that his beautiful and radiant Madonnas could be brought within the purchasing means of the poorest congregation in Italy.  These alone are remarkable enough results, but when we recollect also that Brunelleschi’s defeat led to the building of the cathedral dome, the significance of the event becomes the more extraordinary.

The doors, as I say, were finished in 1424, after twenty-one years’ labour, and the Signoria left the Palazzo Vecchio in procession to see their installation.  In the number and shape of the panels Pisano set the standard, but Ghiberti’s work resembled that of his predecessor very little in other ways, for he had a mind of domestic sweetness without austerity and he was interested in making everything as easy and fluid and beautiful as might be.  His thoroughness recalls Giotto in certain of his frescoes.  The impression left by Pisano’s doors is akin to that left by reading the New Testament; but Ghiberti makes everything happier than that.  Two scenes—­both on the level of the eye—­I particularly like:  the “Annunciation,” with its little, lithe, reluctant Virgin, and the “Adoration”.  The border of the Pisano doors is, I think, finer than that of Ghiberti’s; but it is a later work.

Looking at them even now, with eyes that remember so much of the best art that followed them and took inspiration from them, we can understand the better how delighted Florence must have been with this new picture gallery and how the doors were besieged by sightseers.  But greater still was to come.  Ghiberti at once received the commission to make two more doors on his own scale for the south side of the Baptistery, and in 1425 he had begun on them.  These were not finished until 1452, so that Ghiberti, then a man of seventy-four, had given practically his whole life to the making of four bronze doors.  It is true that he did a few other things besides, such as the casket of S. Zenobius in the Duomo, and the Baptist and S. Matthew for Or San Michele; but he may be said justly to live by his doors, and particularly by the second pair, although it was the first pair that had the greater effect on his contemporaries and followers.

Among his assistants on these were Antonio Pollaiuolo (born in 1429), who designed the quail in the left border, and Paolo Uccello (born in 1397), both destined to be men of influence.  The bald head on the right door is a portrait of Ghiberti; that of the old man on the left is his father, who helped him to polish the original competition plaque.  Although commissioned for the south side they were placed where they now are, on the east, as being most worthy of the position of honour, and Pisano’s doors, which used to be here, were moved to the south, where they now are.