figures were carefully designed, but wanted delicacy of finish. In the specimen of Francesco da Valdambrina the heads were beautiful and the work well finished, but the composition was confused. That of Simon da Colle was a beautiful specimen of casting, because that was his peculiar branch of art, but the design was not good. The specimen presented by Niccolo d’Arezzo showed the hand of the practised master, but the figures were stunted and the work not well finished. The story executed by Lorenzo only, which is still to be seen in the Hall of Audience, belonging to the Guild of the Merchants,[1] was perfect in all its parts. The whole work was admirably designed and very finely composed: the figures graceful, elegant, and in beautiful attitudes; and all was finished with so much care and to such perfection, that the work seemed not to have been cast and polished with instruments of iron, but looked rather as though it had been blown with the breath.
When Donato and Filippo saw the care and success with which Lorenzo had completed his specimen, they drew aside together, and, conferring with each other, decided that the work ought to be given to him, because it appeared to them that the public advantage, as well as individual benefit, would be thus best secured and promoted, since Lorenzo being very young—for he had not completed his twentieth year—would have the opportunity, while exercising his talents on that magnificent work, of producing those noble fruits of which his beautiful story gave so fair a hope. They declared that, according to their judgment, Lorenzo had executed his specimen more perfectly than any of the other artists, and that it would be a more obvious proof of envy to deprive him of it, than of rectitude to accord it to him.
Lorenzo therefore commenced the works for those doors, beginning with that which is opposite to the house of the wardens, and first he prepared a model, in wood, of the exact size which each compartment was to have in the metal, with the framework and the ornaments of the angles, on each of
- ↑ This work is now in the Florentine Gallery, in the room where are the modern bronzes, beside the story executed at the same time by Brunellesco. See Cicognara, vol. ii, pi. 20. See also the fine work of Lasinio, Le tre porte del Battistero di San Giovanni di Firenze incise ed illustrate. Florence, 1821.
