A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

It might be suggested that marble and bronze were not the fittest media to embody the teeming experience of fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Italy. This is probably true. Seeing, however, that the sister art of painting had lagged behind in similar fashion, we must trace the deliberate growth of Italian sculpture to the lesser intensity of the energizing force. The Italians were not stirred to the depths by one heart-searching struggle like that between the Persians and the Hellenes. The contention between city and city was, however, incessant. Within the town walls, too, the strife between class and class was constant. Apart, therefore, from the question of degree, we find in the Italian city-states between 1350 and 1400 a.d. the same restless vortices of intellectual and emotional energy which were the first consequences of Marathon and Salamis.

As in Greece, these vortices were not of one type nor the creation of a single centre. Florence certainly played the part in Italian culture that Athens did in the growth of Hellenism. Of all the cities of Italy, she was most completely in touch with the diverse influences which humanized the arts. But the movement was not a matter of Florentine culture. Just as had been the case in Greece, a hundred centres produced personalities—men and women of every stamp. The theocracy of Rome, the democracy of Florence, the monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of Venice, and the tyranny of Milan, all did their part. All assisted to mould that grand complexity which we call the Italian Renaissance The leaders of public opinion in all these centres, men and women alike, were continually moving about. Artists were invited now to one court now to another; scholars and poets were welcomed at Siena and Ferrara as they were at Milan and Florence. Hence that all-embracing experience of men and things, which must lie at the foundation of every art which is not only to grow, but to live and bear fruit.

But it is one thing to realize the presence of a number of factors favourable to a great art. It is a more difficult thing to estimate the circumstances under which a large measure of this force and experience was diverted into channels which made a Michael Angelo not only possible but certain. The inquiry we are embarking upon is the counterpart of that which we undertook with reference to the evolution of Hellenic sculpture between 480 and 450 b.c. Apart from the longer period occupied, we shall find that the most significant feature is the resemblance between the circumstances which led up to Phidias and those which led up to Michael Angelo. This is not surprising. Indeed, were not many circumstances attending pre-Angelesque sculpture identical with those in the first half of the fifth century b.c., our entire critical method would be endangered. As a matter of fact, the identity of circumstance is remarkable. What is even more important is that where there is a really striking variation we can correlate it with a corresponding one in the result. In other words, we can recognize and account for the characteristics which distinguish the sculpture of the Italian renaissance from that of Greece 1900 years earlier.

GHIBERTI AND THE GATES OF
THE FLORENTINE BAPTISTERY

Turning to the facts: the new spiritual atmosphere, with its strong artistic potentialities, which followed the preaching of St. Francis, was much more favourable to the painter’s art than to that of the sculptor. We have seen that Giotto was able to give adequate expression to the dominant ideas of his age with much greater freedom than such an artist as Andrea Pisano. This general tendency unfavourable to the growth of a vigorous school of Italian sculpture, continued for a long time. Its effect in turning the budding artist’s dreams towards painting or influencing his work in unsculpturesque fashion cannot be doubted. Perhaps this can be most fully illustrated by the subsequent history of the doors of the Florentine baptistery. It will be remembered that Andrea Pisano had erected the first of the three bronze doors seventy years earlier. The political difficulties in the latter part of the fourteenth century prevented the Florentines completing the work. In 1403, however, as a thank-offering after the great plague of 1400, the Guild of Florentine merchants decided to complete the bronze doors of the baptistery. The commission was offered for public competition and advertized throughout Italy. The account left by Lorenzo Ghiberti, the eventual winner, enables us to realize the effect of the news.

Ghiberti had been born in 1381, so that he was barely out of his teens when the announcement of the Florentine Guild was published. He had been educated as a goldsmith, a craft which always flourishes when wealth is accumulating, civil disorders are frequent and banking systems insecure. It provides a ready means of hoarding a small store against a time of stress. But to an artist of ardent imagination and real ambition like the youth Ghiberti, the narrow limits set by goldsmithery were cramping. Reading between the lines, we can see that he was seriously contemplating abandoning his own art for the more expressive art of painting. He had indeed taken the first step. In a passage from his own manuscript in the Magliabecchian Library, he narrates:

“In my youth, anno Christi 1400, moved both by the corrupted air of Florence and the bad state of the country, I fled with a worthy painter who had been sent for by Signor Malatesta of Pesaro, and he gave us a room to paint, which we did with great diligence. My soul was at this time much turned towards painting, partly from the hope of the works in which Signor Malatesta promised to employ us; and partly because my companion was always showing me the honour and utility which would accrue to me. Nevertheless, at this moment, when my friends wrote to me that the governors of the baptistery were sending for masters whose skill in bronze working they wished to prove, and that from all Italian lands many maestri were coming to place themselves in this strife of talent, I could no longer forbear, and asked leave of Signor Malatesta who let me depart.”

Coming to Florence, Ghiberti found himself opposed to six of the best sculptors of Italy. There was Filippo Brunelleschi, who afterwards became famous as the architect of the dome of the Florentine Cathedral. There was also Jacopo della Quercia, the Sienese sculptor, to whom we shall refer again. Each competitor received “four tables of brass,” and a year was given to prepare a panel representing the “Sacrifice of Isaac.” At the end of the time it was evident that the contest had resolved itself into a duel between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. Nor was there any doubt as to the winner. The panels of both men can still be seen side by side in the National Museum at Florence. They witness to the truth of Ghiberti’s boast: “The palm of victory was conceded to me by all the judges and by those who competed with me. Universally the glory was given to me without any exception.” The commission was dated November 23, 1403. The Merchants’ Guild agreed to pay all expenses—the sum eventually expended upon the pair of gates being 22,000 ducats. The wages of his assistants, who included Donatello, Gozzoli and Uccello, were defrayed by the Guild. Lorenzo himself received 200 florins a year, for which he agreed to give all his time. He was bound to design the panels and execute “the nudes, draperies, and all the artistic parts with his own hand.” Upon the completion of the first pair of gates, those executed by Andrea Pisano (1331-1334) were taken down and Ghiberti’s gates erected in the place of honour facing the Cathedral. Nor was this all. Twenty-five years had been spent already. Yet he was ordered to furnish another pair—those which Michael Angelo called “[The Gates of Paradise].” They were unveiled in 1452, when they in their turn displaced the earlier gates of Ghiberti.

The “[Gates of Paradise]” represent the zenith that sculpture could attain, following the path indicated by the Pisani, who had been compelled to work largely in relief owing to the necessity laid upon them of being primarily illustrators of the Scriptures. Ghiberti’s last pair of gates, therefore, merit a detailed examination. There are ten panels, five on each door. Upon these are pictured scenes from Old Testament history from the Creation to Solomon. In some of the reliefs Ghiberti put as many as a hundred figures. Yet the panels never appear crowded. Throughout there is a fine appreciation of the story to be depicted. The beauty of the drawing of the nudes and of the soft flow of the drapery is extreme. It is almost impossible to select a panel which will illustrate all the charms of design and beauties of technique with which the “[Gates of Paradise]” abound. If one must choose, the panel upon which Ghiberti depicts the Creation of Adam and Eve, the Temptation and the Expulsion from Eden, seems to suggest itself. From it we can judge Ghiberti’s treatment of the male and female nude. We can see how marvellously the sense of aerial perspective is rendered by the gradual diminution of relief. The figures nearest the eye are in high relief, the more distant forms being raised to a less and less degree, until “the multitude of the heavenly host” melt imperceptibly into the bronze background.

LORENZO GHIBERTI