and even terrible power of expression in some of the heads;
and it is said that among them are many portraits of contemporaries, but
unfortunately no circumstantial traditions as to particular figures have
reached us.'

One of Orcagna's altar-pieces, that of 'the coronation of the Virgin,'
containing upwards of a hundred figures, and with the colouring still
rich, is in our National Gallery. As an architect, Orcagna designed the
famous Loggia de' Lanzi of the grand ducal palace at Florence.

Now I must take you back to the bronze gates of the Baptistery in their
triumphant completion nearly a hundred years after the first gate was
executed by Andrea Pisano. I should have liked, but for our limits, to
tell in full the legend of the election of Lorenzo Ghiberti, the
step-son of a goldsmith, and skilled in chasing and enamelling, to
design the second gate; when yet a lad of twenty-three, how he and two
other young men, one of them still younger than Ghiberti, were declared
the most promising competitors in the trial for the work; how the last
two voluntarily withdrew from the contest, magnanimously proclaiming
Lorenzo Ghiberti their superior; how all the three lived to be famous,
the one as a founder in metal, the others as an architect and a
sculptor, and remained sworn brothers in art till death.

Lorenzo Ghiberti has left us an expression of the feeling with which he
set about his task, an expression so suggestive that, even had we no
other indication, it is enough to stamp the true and tender nature of
the man. He prepared for his achievement 'with infinite diligence and
love'--the words deserve to be pondered over. He took at least
twenty-two years to his work, receiving for it eleven hundred florins.
He chose his subjects from the life and death of the Lord, working them
out in twenty panels, ten on each side of the folding doors, and below
these were eight panels containing full-length figures of the four
evangelists and four doctors of the Latin Church, with a complete border
of fruit and foliage, having heads of prophets and sibyls interspersed.
So entire was the satisfaction the superb gate gave, that Lorenzo was
not merely loaded with praise, he received a commission to design and
cast a third and central gate which should surpass the others, that were
thenceforth to be the side entrances.

For his second gate Lorenzo Ghiberti repaired to the Old Testament for
subjects, beginning with the creation and ending