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Updated: June 25, 2025
All Florentine work of the finest kind Luca della Robbia's, Ghiberti's, Donatello's, Filippo Lippi's, Botticelli's, Fra Angelico's is absolutely pure Etruscan, merely changing its subjects, and representing the Virgin instead of Athena, and Christ instead of Jupiter.
The same is true about his pulpit in S. Croce at Florence, his treatment of the story of S. Savino at Faenza, and his "Annunciation" in the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples. Benedetto, indeed, may be said to illustrate the working of Ghiberti's influence by his liberal use of landscape and architectural backgrounds; but the style is rather Ghirlandajo's than Ghiberti's.
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.
There are bay twigs, gathered together in bronze sheaves, in the great garland surrounding Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. There are two interlaced branches of bay, crisp-edged and slender, carved in fine low relief inside the marble chariot in the Vatican. There is a fan-shaped growth of Apollo's Laurel behind that Venetian portrait of a poet, which was formerly called Ariosto by Titian.
On Ghiberti's workshop opposite S. Maria Nuova, in the Via Bufalini, the memorial tablet mentions Michelangelo's praise that these doors were beautiful enough to be the Gates of Paradise. After that what is an ordinary person to say? That they are lovely is a commonplace. But they are more.
Croce, the perspective bevelling it into concavities, like those of panelling; the heads and projecting shoulders lightly marked as some carved knob or ornament; to the magnificent compositions in light and shade, all balancing and harmonising each other, and framed round by garlands of immortal blossom and fruit, of Ghiberti's gates. Nor is this all.
A short way with Veronese critics Giotto's missing spire Donatello's holy men Giotto as encyclopaedist The seven and twenty reliefs Ruskin in American At the top of the tower A sea of red roofs The restful Baptistery Historic stones An ex-Pope's tomb Andrea Pisano's doors Ghiberti's first doors Ghiberti's second doors Michelangelo's praise A gentleman artist.
When the "Hermaphrodite" was discovered in the vineyard of S. Celso, Ghiberti's admiration found vent in exclamations like the following: "No tongue could describe the learning and art displayed in it, or do justice to its masterly style." Another antique, found near Florence, must, he conjectures, have been hidden out of harm's way by "some gentle spirit in the early days of Christianity."
In 1401 the specimens were ready, and after much deliberation as to which was the better, Ghiberti's or Brunelleschi's assisted, some say, by Brunelleschi's own advice in favour of his rival the award was given to Ghiberti, and he was instructed to proceed with his task; while Brunelleschi, as we have seen, being a man of determined ambition, left for Rome to study architecture, having made up his mind to be second to no one in whichever of the arts and crafts he decided to pursue.
This power of telling a story plainly, but without dramatic vehemence; of eliminating the painful details of the subject, and combining its chief motives into one agreeable whole, gave peculiar charm to Ghiberti's manner. It marked him as an artist distinguished by good taste. How Delia Quercia treated the "Sacrifice of Isaac" we do not know.
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