BARGELLO, Donatello

Go upstairs and into the large Salone del Consiglio generale, or General Council Hall to the right of the loggia: a powerful, Gothic room with a vaulted ceiling that's directly above the room on the ground floor where you admired Michelangelo's works. Here you'll see an incomparable selection of 15th-century Florentine sculpture masterpieces that confirm the stylistic model based on antiquity, but also on harmonious proportions and the intellectual force of the human figure.

I recommend starting with the two bronze panels that were presented by Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti as part of the competition to decide who would decorate the second baptistery door in 1401. Identical in form and subject (the famous biblical scene of the Sacrifice of Isaac), you can easily note the characteristics of the two artists: Brunelleschi depicted the figures in space with an amazing balance - and in fact he became a great architect - while Ghiberti's attention to surfaces is worthy of a goldsmith, and for this reason he won the competition.

But the great protagonist of the hall is Donatello, the long-lived and ingenious sculptor who was excellent at experimenting with different subjects and materials....