the so-called Porta di San Ranieri of the Cathedral, as well as the architrave of the portal sculptured a bas-relief of Christ in Glory, with David and the Evangelists, now in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Works of the same period exist at and near many Tuscan towns, such as the Old Testament reliefs upon the portal architraves of Santa Mustiola de' Torri near Siena, the Birth of Christ and the Adoration of the Magi in the chapel of San Ansanc in the Cathedral, the reliefs upon the lower portion of the says, was perhaps a Pisan, and certainly an Italian. He identifies him with a Guglielmo, who in 1165 was head master of the Cathedral at Pisa, and sculptor of the pulpit in that church, prior to that made by Giovanni Pisano. (See Vasari, ed. Milanesi, vol. i. p. 274, note.) façade of San Martino at Lucca (1204), those about the portal of the Pieve at Arezzo by Marchionne (1216), and others by anonymous sculptors about the architrave and side posts of the eastern portal of the Baptistry at Pisa (after 1200), representing Christ's descent into Hell, &c. &c. The pulpits of San Bartolomeo at Pistoja by Maestro Guido da Como (1250), of S. Michele at Groppoli between Pistoja and Pescia, of the cathedral of Volterra, at Barga near the Baths of Lucca, and that at San Lionardo near Florence, are all decorated with reliefs which, while they illustrate the extremely low level of sculpture in Tuscany up to the first half of the thirteenth century, show in many instances a striving after greater freedom in arrangement and action. The period was transitional between the decay of Byzantinism, and that when a leader was to arise whose mind and hand were strong enough to direct the aims and shape the destinies of sculpture. This leader was Niccola Pisano, whose history belongs to that of the Pisan school which he founded. As we walk through the quiet streets of Pisa, or traverse the broad plain which divides her from the sea, we find it difficult to realise that in the eleventh century she was a crowded seaport, the busy mart of Oriental traffic, and chief among the Ghibelline cities of Italy. The antique sarcophagi in her Campo Santo, which then decorated the exterior of her newly built Cathedral and served for the next century and a half as tombs for illustrious Pisans and foreigners of distinction deceased at Pisa,* recal to us a still earlier period of her history, when she was a Roman colony and famous for her marble works. To us they are of peculiar interest, not only as visible links between her ancient and medieval periods, but also because Niccola Pisano made the bas-reliefs upon them special objects of study, and learned from them those forgotten arts of composition, treatment of form, and disposition of drapery, which made his sculpture superior to any executed in Italy since the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. This was in the thirteenth century, when Italy was convulsed by the great struggle unceasingly carried on between the Imperial * Such as some Pisan Archbishops; the Countess Beatrice, mother of the Countess Matilda, in 1187; Pope Gregory VIII., who died at Pisa in the same year, and the great Burgundian in 1193. See Appendix A. |