scale, representing the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac, although
the subject-matter of the doors was to be the Life of S. John the
Baptist. Among the judges was that Florentine banker whose name
was beginning to be known in the city as a synonym for philanthropy,
enlightenment, and sagacity, Giovanni de' Medici. In 1401 the specimens
were ready, and after much deliberation as to which was the better,
Ghiberti's or Brunelleschi's--assisted, some say, by Brunelleschi's
own advice in favour of his rival--the award was given to Ghiberti,
and he was instructed to proceed with his task; while Brunelleschi,
as we have seen, being a man of determined ambition, left for Rome to
study architecture, having made up his mind to be second to no one
in whichever of the arts and crafts he decided to pursue. Here then
was the first result of the competition--that it turned Brunelleschi
to architecture.

Ghiberti began seriously in 1408 and continued till 1424, when the
doors were finished; but, in order to carry out the work, he required
assistance in casting and so forth, and for that purpose engaged among
others a sculptor named Donatello (born in 1386), a younger sculptor
named Luca della Robbia (born in 1400), and a gigantic young painter
called Masaccio (born in 1401), each of whom was destined, taking
fire no doubt from Ghiberti and his fine free way, to be a powerful
innovator--Donatello (apart from other and rarer achievements) being
the first sculptor since antiquity to place a statue on a pedestal
around which observers could walk; Masaccio being the first painter
to make pictures in the modern use of the term, with men and women
of flesh and blood in them, as distinguished from decorative saints,
and to be by example the instructor of all the greatest masters,
from his pupil Lippo Lippi to Leonardo and Michelangelo; and Luca
della Robbia being the inspired discoverer of an inexpensive means of