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274 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. X. vanni Pisano, the general aspect of whose work, its unity, distribution, action, and festooned drapery, were obviously in the later artist’s mind. Giovanni had already introduced into his sculptures a pictorial element unknown to Niccola. 1 This element was extended by Ghiberti in his first gate, whilst, in accordance with the great Giottesque maxims, he still made every part fairly if not completely sub ordinate to one great and severe law. Ghiberti thus showed to advantage, even when compared with Andrea; though trusting principally, as Giovanni Pisano had done, to action for effect. 2 The Evangelists and doctors of the church, on the lower courses, display indeed an energy of movement which proves that action was really super seding the gravity of statuary in general; and this feature in the art of Ghiberti was that which his assistant Do natello exaggerated in the pulpits of S. Lorenzo at Flo rence. 3 How the Florentines followed up this path till Michael Angelo produced the triumph of physical force over the ideal of form, in the Jeremiah of the Sixtine chapel, is clear to every observer. It is to be noted, in the meanwhile, that the art which thus linked itself anew to the tradition of Giovanni Pisano had already swept aside much of the influence of Giotto. Indeed, what these bronzes of Ghiberti wanted was the great law of balance in distribution; and they illustrate the use of indirect means for affecting the spectator in the absence of the perfection resulting from the full application of essential maxims. Ghiberti, in fact, repeated, in his branch, the fault of Masaccio in painting; and a genius like that of Uccello, of Mantegna, or Piero della Francesca in the sister art, would have been required to keep sculpture within the due bounds- of positive scientific principles. 4 If we examine the numerous statues which 1 See the dismembered pulpit of Pisa, of 1302, antea. p. 147. 2 This is apparent in the birth of the Virgin, and in the annun ciation of the first gate, in both of which reliefs Ghiberti’s style recals that of Giovanni Pisano. 3 As for instance in the S. John Evangelist, in thought, with his chin in the hollow of his hand. 4 The crucifixion and the trans-
