towards building a Basilica in his honour on which a sum of 4,000 lire was annually spent during the seventy years occupied in its erection.* Niccola Pisano attempted in his design to amalgamate many styles into a harmonious whole. He lived at a time when architectural ideas were in an unsettled state in Italy, and was extremely susceptible to fresh impressions, whose results he grafted upon classical forms to which, like other Italian architects, he clung with extraordinary tenacity. The Gothic elements which he used were a homage to the peculiar predilections of the followers of St. Francis; the clustering Byzantine cupolas showed the effect produced upon him by the church of St. Mark at Venice; while the Romanesque façade told that he had not forgotten the well-beloved Cathedral at Pisa, under the shadow of whose walls his early years. had been spent. If on the one hand this combination of styles, which was habitual to Niccola, corroborates the traditional belief that he was the architect of this church, it weighs equally against the statement that he built the Frari at Venice, whose simple Gothic features, and geometrical rather than sculptural ornaments, belong to quite another school.

It seems probable that four years before the corner stone of the Paduan Basilica was laid, Niccola Pisano went to Lucca to sculpture an alto-relief of the Deposition, which still fills the lunette over one of the side doors of the Cathedral of San Martino. If it had been his only work, it would have sufficed

Vita S. Antonii, caput xxii.; Sancti Francisci Assisiastis, nec non 8. Antonii Paduani, Opera omnia.

The most important work upon this church is that entitled La Basilica di S. Antonio, by the Padri Gonzati and Isnenghi (see vol. i. pp. 120, 121). Selvatico and Ricci attribute only a part of it to Niccola; but Vasari, Gonzati (vol. i. pp. 120, 121), Burckhardt, Morrona (vol. ii. p. 61), and Cicognara (vol. ii. p. 170) assert that he built the whole of it, or at least completely designed it (see Not. St. sull' Arch. Pad, est. dal Giornale di Belle Arti. Venezia, 1834).

Selvatico, Architettura e Scultura in Venezia, p. 98; Ricci, St. dell' Architettura in Italia, vol. ii. p. 328.

§ The date 1233 on the wall of the portico of San Martino, has no connection with Niccola's work. See Milanesi's ed. of Vasari, vol. i. p. 300, note 1. Some writers regard this work as of the school of Niccola, and not by the master; while others (see Crowe and Cavalcaselle's Hist. of Painting, vol. i. pp. 114, 115), consider that he sculptured it in the latter part of his life.

to give him the place of honour which he holds in the annals of Italian art, for it is the first example of a composition properly so called, since the downfall of the Roman Empire. Instead of being strung together with no concurrent action and without connection, as in medieval bas-reliefs, the figures are grouped around a central point of interest, and inspired with a common sentiment.

While Nicodemus detaches the lifeless body from the Cross, and Joseph of Arimathæa sustains it in his arms, the Virgin

and St. John bear up the drooping hands, forming a grand group in the centre of the lunette, the corners of which are filled with kneeling and standing figures, who show by their action how deep an interest they take in the melancholy scene which passes before their eyes.

If, as we suppose, this bas-relief was executed before Niccola had gone through that course of study upon which he founded his second and most characteristic style, it may be taken as an example of what he could accomplish without such study, and

therefore of his comparatively uncultivated powers. The same may be said of the statuettes of the Madonna, St. Dominic, and the Magdalen, in niches on the outside of the Misericordia Vecchia at Florence. In themselves they are of little. importance, with the exception of the Madoana, which is interesting as the prototype of all Madonnas of the Pisan school. In accordance with the spirit of early Christian art, the Virgin is amply draped, and, in token of her peculiar office of showing Christ to the world, holds the child far from her, as though her human affection were controlled by reverence for his divine nature.

The year in which Niccola made these statuettes is unknown, but we may suppose it to have been about 1248, when he was certainly at Florence and employed by the Ghibellines, whose vengeance wreaked itself on the homes as well as on the persons of the Guelphs. Incited by the Emperor, and headed by his son Frederic of Antioch with 1,500 horse, the Ghibellines had driven their enemies out of the city, and had thrown down thirtysix lofty towers, and many palaces lately occupied by the Guelphs, of which the most remarkable was the Toringhi, whose tower rose to the height of 250 feet above its superposed ranges of marble columns.* Desiring also to annihilate the venerable Baptistry, which had been a favourite place of worship with the Guelphs, but not daring to use direct means, they employed Niccola Pisano to throw down upon it a neighbouring tower, called Guardamorto, because corpses intended for burial in the Baptistry were previously exposed for eighteen hours in its chambers. To do this, Niccola, who probably desired to save the Baptistry, removed the stone foundations of the tower on one side, and replaced them with beams to which he set fire, and when these were burned away," it fell," says Villani, "by the grace of God and through a special miracle of St. John, straight across the Piazza." The unrecorded years which passed between Niccola's visit to Lucca and that to Florence, and the twelve which immeliately followed the overthrow of the Guardamorto Tower, may have been spent in building certain churches and palaces, the exact date of whose construction is unknown, but of which he is universally allowed to have been the architect. Among these aro * Cantu, St. degl' Italiani; Malespina, Hist. Fior. pp. 94, 95. ↑ Giovanni Villani, ch. xxxiii. p. 177.

Santa Trinità at Florence,* San Domenico at Arezzo, the Cathedral at Volterra, the Pieve and Santa Margherita at Cortona, all of which were subsequently remodelled. The church of San Michele in Borgo, which he began and his scholar Fra Guglielmo Agnelli finished, and the ingeniously constructed campanile of the church of San Niccolo which he built, are still extant; but many other buildings erected by him or his scholars at Pisa were destroyed by the great fire which desolated that city in the year 1610.+

*

With the exception of the relief of the Deposition at Lucca and the statuettes at Florence, just referred to, Niccola, so far as we know, worked only as an architect until he began the pulpit for the Baptistry at Pisa. In the interval he must have carefully examined such remains of antique sculpture as came within the range of his observation, and recognizing their great superiority to the work of his contemporaries, have determined to take them as his guides in carrying out a work in which sculpture was to play the most important part. In order to obtain as much space as possible for its display, he made his pulpit hexagonal instead of quadrangular in shape according to the common fashion of the time. Acquainted with all architectural styles and troubled, as we have already said, by no scruples about mingling them in one and the same construction, he used Roman, Mediæval, and Gothic elements to enrich it; crowned his columns with classic capitals; rested them on the backs of Lions, as in the church. porches of the Middle Ages; filled his round arches with

Ricci, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 60. According to Villani, this church was built in the year 801. It was rebuilt after Niccola's design in 1230, and restored in 1593 by B. Buontalanti.

Among these were the church of San Matteo, whose external southern walls and cloister alone escaped, and the palace of the magistrates (adjoining the Torre della Fame, where Ugolino and his children miserably perished), upon whose foundations Vasari subsequently built the convent of the Cavalieri di San Stefano. Vasari, vol. i. p. 262; Ricci, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 59. That Niccola had any hand in building the façade of the Duomo at Siena, as stated by Vasari, is now known to be false (Milanesi, St. di Siena, etc. p. 135; Ricci, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 71).

The Lion is a symbol of sacerdotal vigilance, and of wisdom, and a companion of Solomon the wise. The true Solomon is Christ, who is represented with the twelve lions. typical of the twelve apostles. In the

pointed details; and set up statuettes symbolic of the Christian virtues wherever he thought they would produce a harmonious effect. The wonder grows as we study his pulpit, that with such discrepancy of parts it should produce so agreeable and even beautiful an effect. The five bas-reliefs which adorn its sides are its most interesting feature-for they are the firstfruits of a revived art. They represent the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Circumcision, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgment. In them, as in his architecture, Niccola is an eclectic who, like the bee, lights upon every flower and by a mysterious process turns its juices into honey. Any one who knows the Byzantine mode of representing the Nativity will recognize it as the basis of Niccola's treatment of the subject, but beyond the traditional arrangement of the figures it is all his own. These short sturdy forms and flowing robes in no wise resemble those of the long, meagre saints, clad in stiff conventional draperies, who stare at us from the pages of a Greek missal, while the majestic Virgin reclining upon a couch, looks more like an Ariadne than a Byzantine Madonna. In the Adoration we have a still closer imitation of the antique. Here the seated Madonna is as identical with the Phædra in a bas-relief upon an old sarcophagus in the Campo Santo, as the sculptor with his imperfect education could make her.* Sitting on the lap of this Greco-Pisan Virgin, who with little of the style has much of the diguity of her prototype, the infant Christ receives gifts from his royal tributaries, two of whom kneel while one stands beside him. St. Joseph, an angel, and the three horses of the kings, complete the composition, whose simple directness of language is worthy of high praise. In the Circumcision Niccola borrowed not only one but two figures from the antique, namely, the bearded and amply draped personage leaning upon a youth in the foreground, so evidently inspired by the group of Dionysos and Ampelos upon a well-known Greek vase in the Campo Santo. In the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment Niccola seems to us less successful than he was in treating the same

Revelation he is called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Kreuser, op. cit. vol. i. p. 189.

* Beatrice, wife of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, who died A.D. 1076, was buried in it. Its relief's represent the story of Phædra and Hippolytus