perfect. The whole work had design, and was
very well composed. The figures had so graceful a manner, being made
with grace and with very beautiful attitudes, and the whole was finished
with so great diligence, that it appeared not made by casting and
polished with tools of iron, but blown with the breath. Donato and
Filippo, seeing the diligence that Lorenzo had used in his work, drew
aside, and, conferring together, they resolved that the work should be
given to Lorenzo, it appearing to them that thus both the public and the
private interest would be best served, and that Lorenzo, being a young
man not more than twenty years of age, would be able to produce by this
exercise of his profession those greater fruits that were foreshadowed
by the beautiful scene which he, in their judgment, had executed more
excellently than the others; saying that there would have been more sign
of envy in taking it from him, than there was justice in giving it to
him.

Beginning the work of that door, then, for that entrance which is
opposite to the Office of Works of S. Giovanni, Lorenzo made for one
part of it a large framework of wood, of the exact size that it was to
be, with mouldings, and with the ornaments of the heads at the corners,
round the various spaces wherein the scenes were to be placed, and with
those borders that were to go round them. Having then made and dried the
mould with all diligence, he made a very great furnace (that I remember
seeing) in a room that he had hired opposite to S. Maria Nuova, where
to-day there is the Hospital of the Weavers, on the spot that was called
the Aia, and he cast the said framework in bronze. But, as chance would
have it, it did not come out well; wherefore, having realized the
mischief, without losing heart or giving way to depression, he promptly
made another mould and cast it again, without telling anyone about it,
and it came out very well. Whereupon he went on and continued the whole
work in this manner, casting each scene by itself, and putting it, when
finished, into its place. The arrangement of the scenes was similar to
that which Andrea Pisano had formerly made in the first door, which
Giotto designed for him. He made therein twenty scenes from the New
Testament; and below, in eight spaces similar to these, after the said
scenes, he made the four Evangelists, two on each side of the door, and
likewise the four Doctors of the Church, in the same manner; which
figures are all