In Florence besides the abbey of Fiesole, built for Cosimo, Brunelleschi built the church of San Lorenzo for Cosimo's father, and he designed and began the lordly Pitti palace across the Arno, but his great achievement was the dome of the cathedral. The cathedral, first begun by Arnolfo di Cambio, had been in charge of a succession of famous architects, and was nearing completion; but the gap at the intersection of the nave and transepts presented a most difficult architectural problem. The diameter of this gap was about one hundred and thirty-five feet, and the height above the ground was about one hundred and forty-five feet. No such span had been vaulted since the building of the Pantheon. A public competition for a dome was held in which Brunelleschi took part. After long discussion, for Florence was "a city where every one speaks his mind," and after much consideration, Brunelleschi was chosen architect. His great dome, though no copy of Roman forms, was thoroughly classic in its simplicity and its spirit, and is the great achievement of the Early Renaissance in architecture. Brunelleschi and his fellow architects, no doubt, wished to revive the old Roman art, and did so as far as they could, but their problems were new and their models few, so they were forced, in the main, to follow their own principles of construction and limit their use of Roman forms to ornament and detail. Other famous men seconded Brunelleschi; and Florentine, or at least Tuscan, architects spread the ideas of the new art. To them is really due the foundation of the various schools of Renaissance architecture which sprang up in Milan, Venice, Pavia, Bologna, Rimini, Brescia, Siena, Lucca, Perugia, and in almost every city of Northern Italy. In sculpture, the puissant Donatello (1386-1466) is the greatest figure. It has been said, that Michelangelo's soul first worked in Donatello's body or that Donatello's soul lived again in Michelangelo. Donatello was a realist; he shows classic influence at times, in technique and in sundry bits of detail, but his instinct was to imitate what he could see and touch. His vigour, his energy and variety produced a profound effect on sculpture and also on painting. His earlier works were statues for the outside of the Campanile and of the church of Orsanmichele, of which the most famous are that known as _Zuccone_, Baldhead, and the splendid St. George. Afterwards he modelled a young David, the first nude bronze since the Romans, and the statue of Gattamelata at Padua, the first equestrian statue since that of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The spectator who examines the collection of Donatello's works in the Bargello is chiefly struck by his intellectual power, and by the immense variety of his style, from the simple outline of the lovely St. Cecilia in low relief, to the passionate dramas carved in altars and pulpits.