PISANO, Giovanni

Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Italian sculptors and architects, father and son. They were the greatest sculptors of their period and stand at the head of the tradition of Italian sculpture in the same way that Giotto stands at the head of the tradition of Italian painting. They often worked together, but their styles are distinctive.

Nicola came from Apulia, where the emperor Frederick II (d. 1250) had encouraged a classicalGLOSSARYRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. revival, and his first known work, the pulpit in the BaptisteryGLOSSARYHall or chapel situated close to, or connected with, a church, in which the sacrament of baptism is administered. The form of the baptistery originally evolved from small, circular Roman buildings that were designated for religious purposes (e.g., the Temple of Venus, Baalbek, Lebanon, AD 273, and the Mausoleum of Diocletian, Spalato [Split, Croatia], AD 300); but because baptism originally was performed on only three holidays, Easter, Pentecost, and Epiphany, enlargement of the older Roman buildings became necessary to accommodate the growing numbers of converts. Baptisteries were among the most symbolic of all Christian architectural forms; and the characteristic design that was developed by the 4th century AD can be seen today in what is probably the earliest extant example, the baptistery of the Lateran palace in Rome, built by Sixtus III, pope between 432 and 440. The baptistery was commonly octagonal in plan, a visual metaphor for the number eight, which symbolized in Christian numerology a new beginning. As eight follows the "complete" number, seven, so the beginning of the Christian life follows baptism. Customarily, a baptistery was roofed with a dome, the symbol of the heavenly realm toward which the Christian progresses after the first step of baptism. The baptismal font was usually octagonal, set beneath a domical ciborium, or canopy, and encircled by columns and an ambulatory--features that were first used in the baptistery by the Byzantines when they altered Roman structures. Baptisteries commonly adjoined the atrium, or forecourt, of the church and were often large and richly decorated, such as those at Pisa, Florence, Parma, and Nocera in Italy; el Kantara, Alg.; and Poitiers, France. After the 6th century they were gradually reduced to the status of small chapels inside churches. In the 10th century, when baptism by affusion (pouring liquid over the head) became standard practice in the church, baptisteries, or baptismal chapels, were often omitted entirely. In most modern churches the font alone serves for baptism; something of earlier symbolism survives, however, in its usual location near the church door - an allusion to entering the Christian life. at Pisa (dated 1260 Pisan style, i.e. 1259) shows his brilliant adaptation of antiqueGLOSSARYthe classical age of Greece and Rome began with the Greek migrations of the 2nd millennium BC, and ended in the West in 476 AD with the deposition of the Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus (c. 475 AD); in the East it ended in 529 AD when the Platonic Academy was closed by Justinian (482 - 565 AD). forms to a new context. He transformed a Dionysus into Simeon at the Presentation of Christ, a nude Hercules into a personificationGLOSSARYan imaginary person conceived as representing a thing, concept or deity. of Christian Fortitude, and a Phaedra into the Virgin Mary. But instead of following the RomanesqueGLOSSARYStyle of art and architecture prevailing throughout most of Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, the first style to achieve such international currency. The dominant art of the Middle Ages was architecture, and 'Romanesque', like 'Gothic', is primarily an architectural term that has been extended to the other arts of the period. As the name suggests, it indicates a derivation from Roman art, and sometimes Romanesque is used to cover all the developments from Roman architecture in the period from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the flowering of the Gothic roughly AD 500-1200. More usually, however, it is applied to a distinctive style that emerged, almost simultaneously, in several countries - France, Germany, Italy, Spain - in the 11th century. It is characterized most obviously by a new massiveness of scale, reflecting the greater political and economic stability that followed a period when Christian civilization seemed in danger of extinction. Romanesque painting and sculpture are generally strongly stylized, with little of the naturalism and humanistic warmth of classical or later Gothic art. The forms of nature are freely translated into linear and sculptural designs which are sometimes majestically calm and severe and at others are agitated by a visionary excitement that can become almost delirious. Because of its expressionistic distortion of natural form, Romanesque art, as with other great non-naturalistic styles of the past, has had to wait for the revolution in sensibility brought about by the development of modern art in order to be widely appreciated. convention of separating episodes into compartments arranged in bands, he combined them into the formal unity of single pictures on each side of the pulpit with great power and dramatic effect. Several of the figures were directly inspired by ancient sarcophagi that Nicola saw in the Campo Santo in Pisa, but they are much more than simple borrowings, for he made them the vehicle for expressing richly varied human feeling.

Nicola followed the Pisa pulpit with a similar but more complex work for Siena CathedralGLOSSARYThe principal church of a province or diocese, where the throne of the bishop is placed. For reasons lost to time and tradition, a cathedral always faces west - toward the setting sun. The altar is placed at the east end. The main body, or nave, of the cathedral is usually divided into one main and two side aisles. These lead up to the north and south transepts, or arms of the cross, the shape in which a cathedral is usually formed. (1265-68). The carving is deeper, the contrasts between light and shadow sharpened, the reliefs more densely packed and full of movement. By then Nicola had a large workshop, his assistants including his son Giovanni and Arnolfo di Cambio. His last great project was the large fountain in the public square of Perugia, which he and Giovanni finished in 1278. The dozens of reliefs are a typical medieval mixture: biblical scenes, heraldic beasts, personifications of seasons and places, and local dignitaries; but the vigour and spontaneity of the carving express a new freedom and naturalness.

By 1284 Nicola was dead. Between the Perugia fountain and this date, Giovanni, alone or in company with his father, had carved the sculpture for the outside of the Pisa Baptistery (now in the Museo Nazionale). Here for the first time in Tuscany a scheme of monumental statuary was incorporated into architecture. Giovanni developed this much further in Siena, where from 1284 onwards he designed the façadeGLOSSARYthe front or principal face of a building, especially one elaborately constructed; a blind façade is a façade that is purely decorative and does not relate to the structure of the building. of the cathedral and carried out much of the sculptural decoration (some of the figures have been transferred to the cathedral museum). It is the most richly decorated of all the great Italian GothicGLOSSARYGothic, which may well have originated with Alberti as a derogatory term and which certainly corresponds to Vasari's 'maniera tedesca' ('German style'), is properly the descriptive term for an artistic style which achieved its first full flowering in the Ile de France and the surrounding areas in the period between c. 1200 and c. 1270, and which then spread throughout northern Europe. It is characterized by the hitherto unprecedented integration of the arts of sculpture, painting, stained glass and architecture which is epitomized in the great cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, and Reims or in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In all the arts the predominantly planar forms of the Romanesque are replaced by an emphasis on line. There is a transcendental quality, whether in the soaring forms of the pointed arches or in the new stress on the humanity of Christ, which similarly distinguishes it from the preceding Romanesque style. In thinking of Nicola (d. c. 1284) or Giovanni Pisano (d. after 1314) there is same danger of forgetting what had happened in French sculpture half a century or more earlier, and likewise it is hard to remember that the spectacular achievements of early Renaissance art are a singularly localized eddy in the continuing stream of late gothic European art. By northern European standards few Italian works of art can be called gothic without qualification, and the story of 13th and 14th century Italian architecture is as much one of resistance to the new style as of its reception, whether directly from France or through German or central European intermediaries. In sculpture and in painting, the Italian reluctance to distort the human figure, conditioned by a never wholly submerged awareness of the omnipresent antique heritage, gives a special quality to the work of even those artists such as Giovanni Pisano or Simone Martini who most closely approached a pure gothic style. Nevertheless, the vitalizing role of Northern gothic art throughout the early Renaissance and the period leading up to it should never be underestimated. The artistic, like the cultural and commercial, interaction was continuous and much of the Italian achievement is incomprehensible if seen in isolation. It is not merely at the level of direct exchanges between one artist and another, or the influence of one building; painting, manuscript or piece of sculpture upon another, that the effects are to be felt. The streaming quality of line which is so characteristic of Brunelleschi's early Renaissance architecture surely reflects a sensitivity to the gothic contribution which is entirely independent of, and lies much deeper than, the superficial particularities of form. The counterflow of influence and inspiration from South to North must likewise not be underrated. In particular, the contribution of Italian painters from Duccio and Simone Martini onwards is central to the evolution of the so-called International Gothic style developing in Burgundy, Bohemia and north Italy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. cathedral façades, and the statuary has tremendous energy and inner life.

Giovanni's last two great works were pulpits for Sant'Andrea, Pistoia (1300-01), and Pisa Cathedral (1302-10). They are modelled on those of his father, but more elegant in style (showing French Gothic influence) and also more emotionally charged. The Pisa pulpit was damaged in a fire in 1599, then dismantled and reassembled, some parts being dispersed; several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, New York, have fragments that are said to come from it. Giovanni also made a number of free-standing statues, the best known of which is the Virgin and Child on the altar of the Arena ChapelGLOSSARYa small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building. in Padua (c. 1305). Its grandeur and humanity suggests a close kinship with Giotto, amid whose celebrated frescos it stands.