La Présentation au Temple

Brunelleschi's enormous dome over Florence Cathedral was finished in 1436, and its base, the drum, was pierced by eight round windows that had to be filled with colored glass. The city turned to its best artists for the designs. This one, the presentation of the infant Christ at the temple, came from Lorenzo Ghiberti around 1443. Ghiberti was already famous for the bronze doors of the Baptistery nearby, the ones a later age would call the Gates of Paradise, and he supplied the drawing while a glass master named Bernardo di Francesco cut and fired the actual panel. Seen from the cathedral floor the figures read as small glowing shapes gathered around the altar, more than 40 meters overhead inside the drum.