Ghiberti works between 1403 and 1424 on…

Ghiberti works between 1403 and 1424 on the twenty-eight bronze high reliefs for his first set of doors for the Florence Baptistery.

The earlier reliefs display some characteristics of the Late Gothic or International Style, blended with innovative Renaissance features.

During this period he also revives the technique of casting large-scale figures, casting two larger-than-life bronzes for Orsanmichele: Saint Matthew, begun in 1419 and completed in 1422, and Saint Stephen, begun in 1425 and completed in 1428.

He continues work on a third figure, that of Saint John, which he began in 1414.

In 1425, he receives the commission to execute the second pair of doors for the Baptistery, consisting of ten pictorial reliefs, numerous figures and busts, and a festooned frame.

From the 1420s, Donatello and his shop in Florence produce numerous works, especially in Florence, Siena, and Padua.

In the gilt bronze “Saint Louis of Toulouse,” executed in 1423-25 for Orsanmichele, Donatello displays his familiarity with the ideas of Masaccio in characterizing the active inner life of the saint through drapery suggesting strong movement framed by a silhouette.

The city of Florence commissions, perhaps around 1425 (according to a recent theory), what is probably the first freestanding bronze nude since antiquity, the famous “David,” whose nude figure gazes down on the head of a Goliath wearing a winged helmet, a device of the Visconti family of Milan.

The adolescent David's slender sinuosity, his nakedness emphasized by hat, sword, and greaves, symbolizes the Renaissance ideal of physical grace and beauty.