tion, as well as his failure to understand,
or at least to satisfy the more fundamental needs of his art, may be
seen very happily in those two panels now in the Bargello, which he and
Brunellesco made in the competition for the gates of the Baptistery.
Looking on those two panels, where both artists have carved the
Sacrifice of Isaac, you see Ghiberti at his best, the whole interest not
divided, as it is in Brunellesco's panel, between the servants and the
sacrifice, but concentrated altogether upon that scene which is about
to become so tragical. Yet with what energy Brunellesco has conceived an
act that in his hands seems really to have happened. How swiftly the
angel has seized the hand of Abraham; how splendidly he stands, the old
man who is about to kill his only son for the love of God. And then
consider the beauty of Isaac, that naked body which in Brunellesco's
hands is splendid with life, really living and noble, with a truth and
loveliness far in advance of the art of his time. Ghiberti has felt none
of the joy of a creation such as this; his Isaac is sleepy, a little
surprised and altogether docile; he has not sprung up from his knees as
in Brunellesco's panel, but looks up at the angel as though he had never
understood that his very life was at stake. Yet it was in those gates
which, Brunellesco, as it is said, retiring from the contest, the Opera
then gave into his hands, that we shall find the best work of Ghiberti.
There it is really the art of Andrea Pisano that he takes as a master,
and with so fair an example before him produces as splendid a thing as
he ever accomplished, simpler too, and it may be more sincere, though a
little lacking in expressiveness and life. All the rest of his work
seems to me to be lacking in conviction, to be frankly almost an
experiment. His Statue of St. John Baptist, his St. Matthew and St.
Stephen, too, at Or San Michele, different though they are, and with six
years between each of them, seem alike in this, that they are, while
splendid in energy, wanting in purpose, in intention: he never seems
sufficiently sure of himself to convince us. His reliquary in bronze
containing the ashes of S. Zenobius in the apse of the Duomo, is
difficult to see, but it is in the manner of the gates of Paradise. It
was not to the disciples of Ghiberti that the future belonged, but to
those who have studied with Brunellesco. His crucifix in S. Maria
Novella, his Evangelists in the Pazzi Chape