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