63 CHAPTER III. ANDREA PISANO AND HIS SCHOLARS, NINO AND TOMMASO, GIOVANNI A Pisano. LL that is known of the youth of Andrea Pisano da Pontedera, Andrea son of Ugolino di Nino, is that he was early apprenticed to N.A.D.1270. Giovanni Pisano,' and that he devoted much time to the study of the antique marbles at Pisa. When thirty-five years old, he is said to have spent a year at Venice, during which he sculptured Andrea at several statues for the façade of St. Mark's, and made designs for the reconstruction of the arsenal, which were subsequently carried out by that ill-fated Venetian architect, Filippo Calendario.* The probability of Andrea's visit to Venice is strengthened by Venice. He is mentioned as 'famulus Magistri Johannis' in the archives of the Pisan Duomo, 1299-1305 (Ciampi, op. cit. p. 47). 2 Vasari says, 'Dicono alcuni (non l'affirmerai già per vero)' (vol. ii. p. 37). This doubtful assertion is confirmed by a MS., which Orlandi cites in the Abecedario Pittorico, and (as it appeared to Cicognara) by ancient Venetian chronicles, in which, however, Andrea is not mentioned by name. The assertion, that Calendario ameliorated his style by the instructions which he received from Andrea, would be chronologically justified, could it be proved that he came to Venice while Gradenigo was doge. Vide Selvatico, op. cit. pp. 110, 111. This author states his belief that the style of the Pisani penetrated into Venice through Andrea. 3 Founded A.D. 1104, under the Doge Ordelaffo Falieri, at the time of the first Crusade. 4 Hanged in 1354, as implicated in the conspiracy of Marino Faliero. Gates for the Baptistry at Florence. the testimony of Cicognara,' that some of the statues upon the After his return from Venice, Andrea attained the reputation of being the most skilful bronze-caster in Italy; and having gained great praise by a bronze crucifix, which he sent through his friend Giotto as a present to Pope Clement V. at Avignon,3 was commissioned to make those noble gates for the Baptistry at Florence which are his chief and enduring title to fame. Assisted by his son Nino and his scholar Lionardo di Giovanni, he completed the modelling of these gates in 1330, as we learn by an inscription Cicognara, St. della Scultura, vol. iii. p. 405. 2 Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon, who built the Porta della Carta after 1424, are said, by many writers, to have sculptured these column capitals; but to our eyes there is not the slightest resemblance of style between them and the statues upon the Porta del Carta; nor do we know any Venetian sculptor in either century capable of conceiving or sculpturing the capitals of the ducal palace, excepting Calendario, under Andrea's influence. Cicognara ascribes them to Calendario. Ricci (op. cit. vol. ii. p. 329) states his belief that Andrea influenced Calendario's style. F. Zanotto, in his work upon the ducal palace, mentions this inscription upon the column of Justice, Duo Soti (socii) Fiorentini incise;' these two Florentines, he supposes, are the Petrus Magistri Nicholai de Florentia and Joannes Martini de Fesulis, who made the tomb of the Doge Tommaso Mocenigo in S. Giovanni e Paolo, A.D. 1423. The reconstruction of the Riva and Piazzetta façades was decreed under this Doge. Ruskin, in the Stones of Venice, vol. i., and Burges (Iconographie des Chapiteaux, etc., extracted from Revue Archéologique, Paris 1857), cite an inscription in Arabic characters on the seventeenth column from the Riva bridge, dated 1344, in proof of Calendario's claims. Didron doubts if they read it correctly. 3 Clement V. transported the papal seat to Avignon in 1305, wherefore Giotto could not have gone there till after that year (Vasari, vol. ii. p. 325, nete 3). |