uercia's sowing bore after many
years the fruit of world-renowned achievement in Rome.

Two other memorable works of Della Quercia must be parenthetically
mentioned. These are the Fonte Gaja on the public square of Siena, now
unhappily restored, and the portrait of Ilaria del Carretto on her tomb in
the cathedral of Lucca. The latter has long been dear to English students
of Italian art through words inimitable for their strength of sympathetic
criticism.[83]

Ghiberti was brought up as a goldsmith by his stepfather, and it is said
that while a youth he spent much of his leisure in modelling portraits and
casting imitations of antique gems and coins for his friends. At the same
time he practised painting. We find him employed in decorating a palace at
Rimini for Carlo Malatesta, when his stepfather recalled him to Florence,
in order that he might compete for the gate of the Baptistery. It is
probable that from this early training Ghiberti derived the delicacy of
style and smoothness of execution that are reckoned among the chief merits
of his work. He also developed a manner more pictorial than sculpturesque,
which justifies our calling him a painter in bronze. When Sir Joshua
Reynolds remarked, "Ghiberti's landscape and buildings occupied so large a
portion of the compartments, that the figures remained but secondary
objects,"[84] his criticism might fairly have been taxed with some
injustice even to the second of the two gates. Yet, though exaggerated in
severity, his words convey a truth important for the understanding of this
period of Italian art.

The first gate may be cited as the supreme achievement of bronze-casting
in the Tuscan prime. In the second, by the introduction of elaborate
landscapes and the massing together of figures arranged in multitudes at
three and sometimes four distances, Ghiberti overstepped the limits that
separate sculpture from painting. Having learned perspective from
Brunelleschi, he was eager to apply this new science to his own craft, not
discerning that it has no place in noble bas-relief. He therefore
abandoned the classical and the early Tuscan tradition, whereby reliefs,
whether high or low, are strictly restrained to figures arranged in line
or grouped together without accessories. Instead of painting frescoes, he
set himself to model in bronze whole compositions that might have been
expressed with propriety in colour. The point of Sir Joshua's criticism,
therefore, is that Ghi