PISANO, Tommaso

Italian sculptor, son of Andrea Pisano and brother of Nino Pisano. He is documented only between 1363 and 1372, but he may have worked earlier with Nino on the tomb of Simone Salterelli in Santa Caterina, Pisa (the reliefs on the sarcophagusGLOSSARYA coffin or tomb, made of stone, wood or terracotta, and sometimes (especially among the Greeks and Romans) carved with inscriptions and reliefs. lid, 1342-45), and with his father at Orvieto (the two angels of the Porta del Sacro Corporale, 1347-48). No documented work by him survives, although he signed a marble polyptych (undated) in San Francesco, Pisa. Its predellaGLOSSARYAn Italian word for the small strip of paintings which forms the lower edge or socle of a large altarpiece (pala). Such a polyptych consists of a principal, central panel with subsidiary side and/or top panels, and a predella: the predella usually has narrative scenes from the lives of the Saints who are represented in the panels above. Because of the small size of predelle - they are not usually more than 25-30 cm high, though often relatively very wide - they were frequently used for pictorial experiments that the painter did not wish to risk making in the larger panels. The first datable example seems to be that in Simone Martini's S. Louis of Toulouse (1317, Naples). bears reliefs of the Life of Christ; above is a tabernacleGLOSSARYa small canopied recess or container in which the Eucharist or a holy relic is kept. crowned by three gables containing the Virgin and Child with Angels, flanked by three tabernacles on either side with statues of saints. The figures show a total lack of knowledge of the organic constructions of the body and reveal Tommaso as a weak sculptor, though not entirely lacking in a decorative sense.

Other marbleGLOSSARYloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles. sculptures attributed to Tommaso include a Virgin and Child (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), a St Peter (Castelfranco di Sotto), and the tomb of Ligo Amannati (d 1359; Camposanto, Pisa). He also made sculpture in wood, including an Angel of the Annunciation (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and a Virgin and Child (San Nicola, Pisa).

Tommaso was among the first sculptors to express a change in the artistic conception of sculpture in Pisa c. 1370 from the noble, distant character of marble sculpture to the more realistic, appealing, and responsive figures in painted wood.