lendour of
the new facade of the Duomo, it has yet those great treasures which the
Duomo cannot boast, the bronze doors of Andrea Pisano and of Ghiberti.

[Illustration: PIAZZA DEL DUOMO]

Over the south doorway there was placed in the end of the sixteenth
century a group by Vincenzo Danti, said to be his best work, the
Beheading of St. John Baptist; and under are the gates of Andrea Pisano
carved in twenty bronze panels with the story of St. John and certain
virtues: and around the gate Ghiberti has twined an exquisite pattern of
leaves and fruits and birds, it is strange to find Ghiberti's work
thus completing that of Andrea Pisano, who, as it is said, had Giotto to
help him, till we understand that originally these southern gates stood
where now are the "Gates of Paradise" before the Duomo. Standing there
as they used to do before Ghiberti moved them, they won for Andrea not
only the admiration of the people, but the freedom of the city. To-day
we come to them with the praise of Ghiberti ringing in our ears, so that
in our hurry to see everything we almost pass them by; but in their
simpler, and, as some may think, more sincere way, they are as lovely as
anything Ghiberti ever did, and in comparing them with the great gates
that supplanted them, it may be well to remind ourselves that each has
its merit in its own fashion. If the doors of Andrea won the praise of
the whole city, it was with an ever-growing excitement that Florence
proclaimed a public competition, open to all the sculptors of Italy, for
the work that remained, those two doors on the north and east. Ghiberti,
at that time in Rimini at the court of Carlo Malatesta, at the entreaty
of his father returned to Florence, and was one of the two artists out
of the thirty-four who competed, to be chosen for the task: the other
was Filippo Brunellesco. You may see the two panels they made in the
Bargello side by side on the wall. The subject is the Sacrifice of
Isaac, and Ghiberti, with the real instinct of the sculptor, has
altogether outstripped Brunellesco, not only in the harmony of his
composition, but in the simplicity of his intention. Brunellesco seems
to have understood this, and, perhaps liking the lad who was but
twenty-two years old, withdrew from the contest. However this may be,
Ghiberti began the work at once, and finished the door on the north side
of the Baptistery in ten years. There, amid a framework of exquisite
foliage, leaves, birds, and a