Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/10

2 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, the thought occurred to him of making one of the doors of San Pietro of bronze, in like manner. 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, 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