ll kinds of life, he has set the gospel
story in twenty panels, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with
the Pentecost; and around the gate he has set the four Evangelists and
the doctors of the Church and the prophets. Above you may see the group
of a pupil of Verrocchio, the Preaching of St. John.

In looking on these beautiful and serene works, we may already notice
an advance on the work of Andrea Pisano in a certain ease and harmony, a
richness and variety, that were beyond the older master. Ghiberti has
already begun to change with his genius the form that has come down to
him, to expand it, to break down its limitations so that he may express
himself, may show us the very visions he has seen. And the success of
these gates with the people certainly confirmed him in the way he was
going. In the third door, that facing the Duomo, which Michelangelo has
said was worthy to be the gate of Paradise, it is really a new art we
come upon, the subtle rhythms and perspectives of a sort of pictorial
sculpture, that allows him to carve here in such low relief that it is
scarcely more than painting, there in the old manner, the old manner but
changed, full of a sort of exuberance which here at any rate is beauty.
The ten panels which Ghiberti thus made in his own way are subjects from
the Old Testament: the Creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and
Abel, of Noah, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of
Moses on Sinai, of Joshua before Jericho, of David and Goliath, of
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At his death in 1455 they were
unfinished, and a host of sculptors, including Brunellesco and Paolo
Uccello, are said to have handled the work, Antonio del Pollajuolo being
credited with the quail in the lower frame. Over the door stands the
beautiful work of Sansovino, the Baptism of Christ.

It is with a certain sense of curiosity that one steps down into the old
church; for in spite of every sort of witness it has the air of some
ancient temple: nor do the beautiful antique columns which support the
triforium undeceive us. For long enough now the mosaics of the vault
have been hidden by the scaffolding of the restorers; but the beautiful
thirteenth-century floor of white and black marble, in the midst of
which the font once stood, is still undamaged. The font, which is
possibly a work of the Pisani, is on one side, set there, as it is said,
because of old the roof of the church was open, and many a wi