Yet there it stands to this day, firm and splendid, uninjured by celestial envy, more harmonious than St. Peter's, the crown of the beautiful city. Its measurements and size and the secrets of its formation we do not pretend to set forth; the reader will find them in every guide-book. But the keen, impetuous, rapid figure of the architect, impatient, and justly impatient, of all rivalry, the murmurs and comments of the workmen; the troubled minds of the city authorities, not knowing how to hold their ground between that gnome of majestic genius who had fathomed all the secrets of construction and built a hundred Duomos in his mind, while they were pottering over the preliminaries of one; have all the interest of life for us.
Through the calm fields of art he goes like a whirlwind, keen, certain, unfailing in his aim, unsparing in means, carried forward by such an impulse of will and self-confidence that nothing can withstand him. Sure of his own powers, as he was when he carved in secret the crucifix which was to cover poor Donatello with confusion, he saw before him, over his carvings, as he worked for the Roman goldsmith, the floating vision of the great dome he was to build—and so built it, all opposition notwithstanding, clearing out of his way with the almost contemptuous impatience of that knowledge which has no doubt of itself, the competing architects.
GHIBERTI'S GATES[35]
BY CHARLES YRIARTE
The Baptistery is the most ancient building in Florence. If not of pagan origin it dates from the earliest ages of Christianity. It was coated with marble of different colors by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1293, while in the sixteenth century Agnolo Gaddi designed the lantern; but long before Arnolfo's time it had been employed as a Christian place of worship, being used as a cathedral up to 1128, when it was converted into a baptistery.
This building contains three gates, which have no parallel in the world. The oldest is that on the southern side, upon which Pisano spent twenty-two years of his life, a most beautiful work representing, in twenty compartments, the life of St. John the Baptist. The frieze which runs round it was commenced nearly a century afterward by Ghiberti, and Pollaiuolo had much to do with its completion.
The northern gates are by Ghiberti, and, like those of Pisano, are divided into twenty compartments, the subject being the life of Christ. The bronze door-posts are delicately carved with flowers, fruit, and animals. These gates were first placed on the eastern side, but in 1452 were removed to make room for Ghiberti's still finer work.
On the third façade, that which faces the Duomo, is the Porta del Paradiso, so named by Michael Angelo, who declared that this gate was worthy to be the entrance into Paradise. Ghiberti divided each panel into five parts, taking the following as his subjects, after suggestions made by Leonardo Bruni Aretino: (1) Creation of Adam and Eve; (2) Cain and Abel; (3) Noah; (4) Abraham and Isaac; (5) Jacob and Esau; (6) Joseph in Egypt; (7) Moses on Mount Sinai; (8) The Capture of Jericho; (9) David Slaying Goliath; (10) The Queen of Sheba and Soloman.
The frieze contains statuettes of the prophets and prophetesses and portrait-busts of men and women still alive, including Ghiberti himself, and his father; while the frame-posts, with their masses of vegetation and flora wrought in bronze, are admirable for their truth to nature. Bronze groups representing the "Decapitation of St. John the Baptist," by Danti, and the "Baptism of our Lord," by Andrea Sansovino, surmount two of the gates, which were at one time heavily gilded, tho few traces of this are now visible.