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Between 1425 and 1427 Ghiberti executed the bronze tomb slab of Leonardo Dati (d. 1425), general of the Dominican Order, the head of which may have been worked from a death-mask.
Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one of the commonest types of commemorative monument was a tomb slab set in the church floor. Occacionally, in the hands of a great sculptor, this was elevated into a work of art. In San Frediano at Lucca it was stamped with the personal rhythms and rolling drapery of Jacopo della Quercia's mature style; in Santa Maria Novella in Florence it took on the flowing silhouette of Ghiberti's tomb slab of Leonardo Dati; and in Siena Cathedral it embraced the complex space structure of the Pecci tomb slab of Donatello. On one occasion, and one only, the tomb slab was developed further still, and was raised on a carved marble surround which lent it the status of a free-standing monument. The work in question is Michelozzo's tomb slab of Pope Martin V in San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome.
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