hat of Ghiberti's; but it is a later work.

Looking at them even now, with eyes that remember so much of the
best art that followed them and took inspiration from them, we
can understand the better how delighted Florence must have been
with this new picture gallery and how the doors were besieged by
sightseers. But greater still was to come. Ghiberti at once received
the commission to make two more doors on his own scale for the south
side of the Baptistery, and in 1425 he had begun on them. These were
not finished until 1452, so that Ghiberti, then a man of seventy-four,
had given practically his whole life to the making of four bronze
doors. It is true that he did a few other things besides, such as the
casket of S. Zenobius in the Duomo, and the Baptist and S. Matthew
for Or San Michele; but he may be said justly to live by his doors,
and particularly by the second pair, although it was the first pair
that had the greater effect on his contemporaries and followers.

Among his assistants on these were Antonio Pollaiuolo (born in
1429), who designed the quail in the left border, and Paolo Uccello
(born in 1397), both destined to be men of influence. The bald head
on the right door is a portrait of Ghiberti; that of the old man
on the left is his father, who helped him to polish the original
competition plaque. Although commissioned for the south side they
were placed where they now are, on the east, as being most worthy of
the position of honour, and Pisano's doors, which used to be here,
were moved to the south, where they now are.

On Ghiberti's workshop opposite S. Maria Nuova, in the Via Bufalini,
the memorial tablet mentions Michelangelo's praise--that these doors
were beautiful enough to be the Gates of Paradise. After that what is
an ordinary person to say? That they are lovely is a commonplace. But
they are more. They are so sensitive; bronze, the medium which Horace
has called, by implication, the most durable of all, has become in
Ghiberti's hands almost as soft as wax and tender as flesh. It does
all he asks; it almost moves; every trace of sternness has vanished
from it. Nothing in plastic art that we have ever seen or shall see
is more easy and ingratiating than these almost living pictures.

Before them there is steadily a little knot of admirers, and on
Sundays you may always see country people explaining the panels to each
other. Every one has his favourite among these fascinating Biblical
scenes, a