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. [Illustration: LORENZO GHIBERTI “THE GATES OF PARADISE” Baptistery, Florence] Technically—judged from the standpoint of workmanship in bronze—“The Creation Panel” is beyond criticism. Comparing it with a painting by Giotto, or, to take an artist of a later date, by Fra Angelico, we feel, however, that something is lacking. Though the subjects depicted are biblical, Ghiberti’s work lacks the spirituality which an artist working under the influence of Giotto, consciously or unconsciously, infused into his work. Italy in the fifteenth century had realized the fallacies that underlay the narrow creed of the Church and the too rigid philosophy of the Scholastics. Ghiberti, like many another Italian artist, could not accept the judgment of the extreme ascetics who saw in the beauties of the human form only snares set by the devil to catch the souls of men. Whatever may have been Ghiberti’s personal religious belief, as an artist he knew that such a creed was impossible. He saw that the beauties which the eye could see were his raw material. The mystical artists of the Giottesque school would have cried with Watts, “I paint ideas, not things.” Ghiberti worked upon the principle that an artist holding such a creed only approaches success when he forgets his predilection for ideas in the interest aroused by the beauties of the natural world and particularly by the beauties of the human form.