52 THE FINE ARTS. 
entered upon a trial of skill respecting these gates; and thirty-four judges 
of art pronounced his, Brunelleschi’s, and Donatello’s designs the best, but 
the two last masters voluntarily yielded to Ghiberti. Besides these gates, 
Ghiberti cast several statues for the churches of Florence. His contempo- 
rary, the above mentioned Donatello, properly called Donato di Betto 
Bandi, was born in Florence in the year 13883. His merits as a sculptor 
are very considerable, and he was the cause of more attention being paid 
to the treasures of antiquity; in consequence of which the De’ Medici and 
other princes began to collect into museums the ancient statues still extant, 
and to cause those which had suffered injury to be restored. His style is 
noble, his attitudes easy and graceful, and his draperies clear and natural ; 
the heads and the action of his figures are characteristic. The number of 
his works is not inconsiderable: among them are a relief, the Annunciation, 
in Santa Croce, S¢. M/agdalen,and St. John the Baptist (pl. 7, fig. 11) in the 
Baptistery. This last statue was carved in wood, and was afterwards cast in 
bronze, after Donatello’s model, by the French sculptor Poncé. In the 
church of Or San Michele are the statues of St. Mark, St. Peter, and St. 
George, by Donatello, the last (jig. 12) being regarded as one of the best 
works of this master. He also executed many other works, among them 
the fine equestrian statue of General Gatta-Melata. He died in 1466. The 
transition from the 15th to the 16th century is formed by Andrea Verro- 
chio, who was born in Florence in the year 1432, and died in 1488. He 
was a pupil of Donatello and teacher of Leonardo da Vinci; for Verrochio 
was a brass-founder, goldsmith, architect, painter, engraver, form-cutter, sur- 
veyor, carver, and musical composer, and in all these branches he excelled. 
When Verrochio was painting a Baptism of Christ, Leonardo da Vinci, then 
only thirteen years old, introduced into the picture an angel, whose beauty 
so astounded the master that he never after touched a pencil. Verrochio 
also introduced the process of taking plaster-casts from life, which had been 
invented by Lysistratus, a pupil of Phidias. His works are clever; his 
men’s heads are full of expression (jig. 10 represents the bust of a bronze 
statue, an apostle in the church of Or San Michele in Florence); and his 
female heads, especially in the treatment of the hair, are so beautiful, that 
Leonardo da Vinci often copied them. 
But of all the masters of that period Michael Angelo accomplished the 
most for the perfection of art, which he brought nearest to the antique, 
although his great powers sometimes led him into exaggeration. Michael 
Angelo Buonarotti was born, 1474, at Sattignano in the territory of Flo- 
rence. He was a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandajo in painting and of 
Bertoldo in sculpture, after which he studied anatomy for twelve years in 
the convent of San Spirito. Of his merits as a painter we shall have 
occasion to speak hereafter: his architectural achievements were dis- 
cussed in another part of this work; but it is as a sculptor that he mani- 
fested most conspicuously the deep seriousness of his disposition, the 
clearness and directness of his conceptions, and the sublimity with which 
he embodied them in his works. His forms are simple and grand, and are 
elevated above those of common life; his characters are no portraits of 
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