The latter, with Brunellesco, Ghiberti, and a few other sculptors, competed with their designs for the work of making the celebrated bronze doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence, when Ghiberti’s design was adjudged the best, and of which Michelangelo at a later period said, when speaking of the gates, that they were “fit to be the gates of Paradise.” Brunellesco’s design was good, was more restrained in character, and was more consistent with correct architectural principles than Ghiberti’s; but the latter’s design was so fresh and so vigorous, that in spite of its being too picturesque for sculpture it won universal admiration. The next great name in architecture is that of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), who naturally follows Brunellesco. His most complete work is the Rucellai Palace at Florence; he built and restored many churches, tombs, and palaces; was a great mathematician, and very learned in Latin, in which language he wrote poems, plays, and treatises on painting and architecture. [Illustration: Fig. 408.—Portion of the Strozzi Palace.] The Rucellai Palace is a very fine work of the Renaissance. It has the three orders of architecture in its pilasters, with their entablatures. The lower story has a small square window placed high from the ground between every two pilasters, and has two square-headed doorways. Between each pair of pilasters in the upper stories are round-headed windows, which have each a double light divided by a small column. The style of building is called “rusticated,” like so many of the Italian palaces (Fig. 408). This is a roughened form of stonework, and was copied from Roman buildings, which, together with the heavy cornices and symmetrical repetition of windows, gave these palaces a heavy and imposing look. Another palace of the Rucellai type is the Cancelleria at Rome, which was built by Bramante (1444-1514), a native of Castel-Durante, in Urbino, who also built St. Peter’s at Rome, and who was the greatest architect of the Renaissance, of whom Michelangelo testified “that Bramante was equal to any architect who has appeared from the time of the ancients to our own, can by no means be denied.” Michelangelo himself was the architect of the dome of St. Peter’s, and his sublime works in sculpture and fresco adorn the interior. The Cancelleria Palace is a masterpiece of elegance and good proportion. It has two imposing doorways, and the plainness of its lower story contrasts agreeably with the upper two, which have rows of round-headed windows enclosed in flat or square-headed architraves, and are placed at agreeable distances above the entablatures of the lower stories. The two upper stories are divided alternately into wide and narrow divisions by pilasters, the windows being placed in the wide divisions. This building is a marked improvement in point of beauty on the Pitti and Rucellai palaces. [Illustration: