He also developed a manner more pictorial than sculpturesque, which justifies our calling him a painter in bronze.

When Sir Joshua Reynolds remarked, "Ghiberti's landscape and buildings occupied so large a portion of the compartments, that the figures remained but secondary objects,"[84] his criticism might fairly have been taxed with some injustice even to the second of the two gates.

Yet, though exaggerated in severity, his words convey a truth important for the understanding of this period of Italian art.
The first gate may be cited as the supreme achievement of bronze-casting in the Tuscan prime.

In the second, by the introduction of elaborate landscapes and the massing together of figures arranged in multitudes at three and sometimes four distances, Ghiberti overstepped the limits that separate sculpture from painting.

Having learned perspective from Brunelleschi, he was eager to apply this new science to his own craft, not discerning that it has no place in noble bas-relief.