“I’m sick,” said Mr. B. “Mr. G. knows so much about building a dome, let him go on with it.”

So the people went back to Mr. G. and told him to go ahead. Then Ghiberti tried, but he was able to go only a little way and couldn’t go any farther.

So then the people went back to Brunelleschi again.

“If you’ll make that Ghiberti keep still and not say another word,” said Mr. B. , “I will go on as I started,” and he did, finishing the first and one of the most beautiful domes of its kind i. t. w. W. , and no one to this day knows exactly how he did it.

Although Ghiberti was such a poor “sport,” he was, however, a great sculptor. Right across the street from the cathedral with the dome which Brunelleschi built is a low, six-sided building called a baptistery, because they baptized children there. The doors of this baptistery are made of bronze, and on these doors Ghiberti made bronze figures and scenes of some of the Bible stories. One of these pictures in bronze shows Abraham about to sacrifice his son on the altar as he was told to do by God.

“They are fit to be the gates to Paradise!” said another great Florentine artist when he saw these doors. The artist who said this was named Michelangelo, and he lived in Italy at the same time as Columbus. Columbus was never at home; he was away from Italy almost all his life, discovering new countries. But Michelangelo never left Italy; he stayed at home. He spent his whole life there making beautiful drawings, paintings, sculptures, and buildings, for an artist in those days did every kind of artistic work, from making necklaces to churches, as well as painting and sculpture.

One day Michelangelo found a block of marble which some one had thrown away because it had a crack in it.Michelangelo said that he saw in this block of marble the figure of young David, so he set to work with his chisel and cut the figure of the young shepherd boy out of the marble. In Florence there are two huge copies of this statue several times bigger than a man, and in thousands of other places in the World there are small copies in plaster, and you may have one of these copies in your own home.