That can both worken well and hastilie,
This must be done at leisure, perfectlie.”
[p 20]
With him it was not the hand only that wrought, nor even the hand and head; but the soul within him gave life to both. Of the contrast between old ways and new, few examples are more striking than the hinges of the door at S. Mary Key, Ipswich; where we have a simple but graceful scroll of ancient date, and a clumsy iron bar of to-day, lying side by side. For a beautiful design in beaten iron the doors of Worksop Priory may claim to have not many rivals.
SOUTH PORCH, SEMPRINGHAM ABBEY.
[p 21]
The most splendid doors in the world are probably the bronze doors of the Baptistery at Florence. Other bronze doors there are on the Continent, and all of them fine; Aix-la-Chapelle, Mayence, Augsburg, Hildesheim, Novgorod, all have doors of this kind; at Verona, too, in the church of San Zeno, are ancient examples, whereon are set forth in panels a number of subjects from Holy Scripture and from the life of the patron saint. All, however, fall into [p 22] insignificance beside the “Gates of Paradise,” as the Florentines proudly call their doors.
DOOR AT DARTMOUTH CHURCH.
In 1400 the Gild of Cloth Merchants of Florence decided to make a thank-offering for the cessation of the plague; and the form which it took was a pair of bronze doors for the baptistery of the church of S. Giovanni, to correspond with some already there. These earlier ones are the work of Pisana and his son Nino, from designs by Giotto; the creation of the new ones was thrown open to competition. Many competitors appeared, of whom six were asked to submit specimens of designs for the panels; and, finally, when the choice lay between two only, the elder, Brunellesco, himself advised that the commission should be entrusted to Ghiberti, a youth then barely twenty years of age. The doors when completed contained twenty scenes from the Saviour’s life, together with figures of the four Latin Doctors and the four Evangelists, set in a frame of exquisite foliage. This splendid work was surpassed by a second pair of doors subsequently made for the same place. In this there are ten panels setting forth scenes from the Old Testament history; and the frame is adorned with niches and [p 23] medallions in which are placed some fifty allegorical figures and portrait heads. It was of these last doors, which were only completed in Ghiberti’s mature age, that no less a judge than Michael Angelo said, “They might stand as the gates of Paradise itself.”
Aix-en-Provence claims that her doors are as peerless as examples of the wood-carver’s art, as are the Florentine ones as types of the metal-worker’s. They have been preserved, it is said, from the sixth century, and are still wonderfully fresh and delicate. There are on each door six upper panels filled with figures of the twelve Sybils; and below one large panel, occupied, in one case, by effigies of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, and in the other by Ezekiel and Daniel. The carving is only occasionally exhibited, two masking doors having been cleverly contrived to protect and cover the real ones.