cardinal his safety, had been finished only eleven years. Donatello was
to have designed them, but his work at Padua was too pressing. The
commission was then given to Michelozzo, Donatello's partner,
and to Luca della Robbia, but it seems likely that Luca did nearly
all. The doors are in very high relief, thus differing absolutely
from Donatello's at S. Lorenzo, which are in very low. Luca's work
here is sweet and mild rather than strong, and the panels derive
their principal charm from the angels, who, in pairs, attend the
saints. Above the door was placed, at the time of Lorenzo's escape,
the beautiful cantoria, also by Luca, which is now in the museum of
the cathedral, while above the door of the old sacristy was Donatello's
cantoria. Commonplace new ones now take their place. In the semicircle
over each door is a coloured relief by Luca: that over the bronze doors
being the "Resurrection," and the other the "Ascension"; and they are
interesting not only for their beauty but as being the earliest-known
examples in Luca's newly-discovered glazed terra-cotta medium,
which was to do so much in the hands of himself, his nephew Andrea,
and his followers, to make Florence still lovelier and the legend
of the Virgin Mary still sweeter. But of the della Robbias and their
exquisite genius I shall say more later, when we come to the Bargello.

As different as would be possible to imagine is the genius of that
younger sculptor, the author of the Pietà at the back of the altar,
near where we now stand, who, when Luca finished these bronze doors,
in 1467, was not yet born--Michelangelo Buonarroti. This group, which
is unfinished, is the last the old and weary Titan ever worked at,
and it was meant to be part of his own tomb. Vasari, to whose "Lives
of the Painters" we shall be indebted, as this book proceeds, for so
much good human nature, and who speaks of Michelangelo with peculiar
authority, since he was his friend, pupil, and correspondent, tells us