availed liimself of tlieir services than of those of the incapable and inferior artists employed.
When Pope Eugenius IV. was raised to the pontifical throne, in the year 1431, and heard that the Florentines were causing the doors of San Giovanni to be executed by Lorenzo Ghiberti,[1] the thought occurred to him of making one of the doors of San Pietro of bronze, in like manner.[2] But as Eugenius did not himself understand works of that kind, he confided the care of th-e matter to his ministers, with whom Antonio Filarete, then very young, and Simone, the brother of Donato, both Florentine sculptors, had so much interest, that the work was entrusted to them. They commenced it accordingly, and after having laboured twelve years, the door was completed; for although Pope Eugenius fled from Pome, and was long much perplexed by the councils,[3] yet those who had the care of San Pietro, took such precautions that the work was not abandoned. Filarete divided the bassi-rilievi of the door into two simple compartments only, placing two upright figures in each compartment, the Saviour and the Madonna being in the upper division, with St. Peter and St. Paul below. At the foot of St. Peter is the kneeling figure of Pope Eugenius, a portrait from the life: there is also a small historical scene beneath each figure, pourtraying an event from the
- ↑ Ghiberti had already completed the north door, and was then working at that which was placed opposite to the cathedral.
- ↑ The Florentine commentators remark, that there are certain stories relating to the Councils of Ferrara and Florence on the bronze door executed by order of Eugenius, and which must therefore have been made subsequently to the year 1459; but the German translation of Vasari has a note to the following effect. In the Augusterium of Dresden is a small copy in bronze of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, Avhich bears the following inscription: Antonius Averlinus architectus hanc ut vulgo fertur Commodi Anionini Augusti ceneam statuam simulquc equum ipsum effinxit ex eadem ejus statua qum nunc servatur apud S. Johannem Lateranum quo tempore jussu Eugenii quarti fabricahis est Romce aneas.. Templi S. Petri... quae quidem... ipsa dona dat Petro Medici viro innocentissimo optimoque civi Anno a natalli (?) Christiano mccccliv. Pope Eugenius occupied the papal throne till the year 1447; there cannot therefore be a doubt that the door was executed between 1439 and 1447. The small bronze statue of the Augusterium belongs to the same period. See the Kunstblatt for 1826, p. 371; see also the Catalogue of the Royal Collection of Antiquities in Dresden for the year 1833, p. 17.
- ↑ We are here to understand the Council of Basle (1439) only, from which this pontiff suffered very serious vexations.
