nd elsewhere even separate works of greater force and beauty
belonging to this, the first or architectural, period of Italian
sculpture; and nowhere has the whole body of Christian belief been set
forth with method more earnest and with vigour more sustained.[68] The
subjects selected by these unknown craftsmen for illustration in marble,
are in many instances the same as those afterwards painted in fresco by
Michael Angelo and Raphael at Borne. Their treatment, for example, of the
creation of Adam and Eve, adopted in all probability from still earlier
and ruder workmen, after being refined by the improvements of successive
generations, may still be observed in the triumphs of the Sistine Chapel
and the Loggie.[69] It was the practice of Italian artists not to seek
originality by diverging from the traditional modes of presentation, but
to prove their mastery by rendering these as perfect and effective as the
maturity of art could make them. For the Italians, as before them for the
Greeks, plagiarism was a word unknown, in all cases where it was possible
to improve upon the invention of less fortunate predecessors. The student
of art may, therefore, now enjoy the pleasure of tracing sculpturesque or
pictorial motives from their genesis in some rude fragment to their final
development in the master-works of a Lionardo or a Raphael, where
scientific grouping of figures, higher idealisation of style, the
suggestion of freer movement, and more varied dramatic expression yield at
last the full flower that the simple germ enfolded.

Among the most distinguished scholars of Niccola Pisano's tradition must
now be mentioned Andrea da Pontadera, called Andrea Pisano, who carried
the manner of his master to Florence, and helped to fulfil the destiny of
Italian sculpture by submitting it to the rising art of painting. Under
the direction of Giotto he carved statues for the Campanile and the facade
of S. Maria del Fiore; and in the first gate of the Baptistery, he
bequeathed a model of bas-relief in bronze, which largely influenced the
style of masters in the fifteenth century. To overpraise the simplicity
and beauty of design, the purity of feeling, and the technical excellence
of Andrea's bronze-work, would be difficult. Many students will always be
found to prefer his self-restraint and delicacy to the more florid manner
of Ghiberti.[70] What we chiefly observe in this gate is the control
exercised by the sister art of painting ove