He was no architect, as we know from his incompetence to do more than impede Brunelleschi in the building of the dome.

He came into the world to create a new and inimitable style of hybrid beauty in those gates of Paradise.

His susceptibility to the first influences of the classical revival deserves notice here, since it shows to what an extent a devotee of Greek art in the fifteenth century could worship the relics of antiquity without passing over into imitation.

When the "Hermaphrodite" was discovered in the vineyard of S.Celso, Ghiberti's admiration found vent in exclamations like the following: "No tongue could describe the learning and art displayed in it, or do justice to its masterly style." Another antique, found near Florence, must, he conjectures, have been hidden out of harm's way by "some gentle spirit in the early days of Christianity." "The touch only," he adds, "can discover its beauties, which escape the sense of sight in any light."[86] It would be impossible to express a reverential love of ancient art more tenderly than is done in these sentences.

So intense was Ghiberti's passion for the Greeks, that he rejected Christian chronology and reckoned by Olympiads--a system that has thrown obscurity over his otherwise precious notes of Tuscan artists.