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In Florence in 1362 work was resumed on the façade of the Cathedral, and from then on a host of documents testifies to large-scale sculptural activity. From the 1380s on there emerge the leading figures in the transitional period to the fifteenth century, Jacopo di Piero Guidi, Giovanni d'Ambrogio, and Pietro di Giovanni Tedesco, a sculptor from Brabant who had worked on Milan Cathedral. Of greater artistic interest than the sculptures for the façade is another contemporary commission in which two of the same artists were involved. This was for the large reliefs of Virtues above the arcading of the Loggia dei Lanzi, which were designed by the painter Agnolo Gaddi and were executed by Giovanni d'Ambrogio and Jacopo di Piero Guidi.
The scale of the reliefs is very large, and in them one of the two sculptors, Giovanni d'Ambrogio, proves to be an artist of considerable resource. His fine craftsmanship is evident in his earliest authenticated works: in the cycle of marble reliefs illustrating the Virtues at the Loggia dei Lanzi, Justice and Prudence stand out for their monumentality, the sureness with which the figures are constructed, the quiet yet fluid drapery style, the classical balance between the forms and the skilled integration of the figures with the background.
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