San Gregorio

Commissioned in 1446 from Luca, Maso di Bartolomeo and Michelozzo, who probably designed the framing of the door leaves, the Door was then executed by Luca, under a second contract after Maso's death, between 1464 and 1469. The example of Donatello's doors for the Old Sacristy of S. Lorenzo (1440-1443) was certainly borne in mind, especially by Michelozzo for the layout of the composition; but to the violent agitation of the “fencing” Saints and Doctors in Donatello's stiacciato, Luca opposes the rhythmic balance of a classicizing naturalism of Gothic taste. The repeated groups of three figures are harmoniously arranged, each clearly distinct in its regular geometric compartment, forming the closed stanzas of a poem that finds its unity not in Donatello's continuous passage of vibrations and motifs from one panel to the next, but in the proportioned system of the chessboard composition; without, however, being reduced, despite the rigour of the layout, to cold geometry.