Excerpt from A History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 4: Florentine Masters of the Fifteenth Century Ghiberti, who enthusiastically urges the claim of the Tuscan school of painting to the perfection of the Greeks? But who need not be taken as literally meaning all that he says in this respect, had clearly intended, at the outset of his career, to become a painter. Unwilling, perhaps, to compete with his father, who was a sculptor, he chose to forget the rules of plastic art. The competition for the gates of S. Giovanni altered his resolve; and he went in for the prize with others, amongst Whom was not Donatello, as we are now aware.' The manner in which he carried out the work of the first gate, in company with Barto luccio, his father, illustrates a remarkable tendency in the age, the introduction of a style exclusively pictorial in the execution of has-relief, a new feature that was soon to find its concomitant in painting.6 The prototype of Ghiberti in his first great enter prise is Giovanni 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 sculpture a pictorial element unknown to Nicola.6 This. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.