Vetrata del Duomo di Firenze

When this glass went in, the cathedral it lit had no dome. The crossing stood open to the sky, and Brunelleschi's competition to close it was still six years off. Ghiberti was about 34 and busy with the bronze doors of the Baptistery across the square, so what he supplied here was a design on paper, Saint Stephen enthroned among four angels, green in the saint's mantle with red and violet in the robes around him. The glass itself was cut and fired by Niccolo di Piero, a German master working in Florence, and the last payment reached him in April 1415. Within eight years the panel had to be held together with an iron mesh, and it was repaired again in 1432.