Nicola Pisano and Giovanni Pisano

Italian sculptors

• Giovanni Pisano
• Born: c. 1250
• Birthplace: Pisa (now in Italy)
• Died: Between 1314 and 1318
• Place of death: Probably Siena, Republic of Siena (now in Italy)

• Nicola Pisano
• Born: c. 1220
• Birthplace: Probably Apulia (now in Italy)
• Died: Between 1278 and 1284
• Place of death: Pisa (now in Italy)

By synthesizing Gothic and classical influences, Nicola Pisano and Giovanni Pisano created sculptural styles that are considered proto-Renaissance in their concern with expanded form and space and humanized narrative scenes.

Early Lives

Although the earliest known work of Nicola Pisano (nee-KAW-lah pee-SAHN-oh) is the signed and dated pulpit for the baptistery of Pisa of 1260, the style and skill demonstrated there are clearly the work of a mature artist. His history and career before 1260, however, are largely a matter of conjecture based on a few late documents and observable influences on the style of his known works. On the basis of two documents dated 1266 that refer to him as “Nicolas de Apulia,” it is thought that he was probably born in southern Italy around 1220. This theory is supported by the strong influence of classical sculpture seen in the marble reliefs of the Pisa pulpit, an influence that suggests a familiarity with the classicized art encouraged in the south during the reign of Frederick II. Nicola may also have passed through Rome while making his way north.

By 1258, Nicola had established himself as an artist in Pisa. Because his son Giovanni is documented as having been born in Pisa, possibly as early as 1248, Nicola most likely arrived in that city around mid-century. Attributions of works whose dates precede that of the Pisa pulpit have been made, but none is certain. A visit to France by Nicola in the 1250’s has been suggested, based on stylistic and iconographic details of the Pisa pulpit, but such a trip is not accepted by all scholars.

Giovanni Pisano was trained as a sculptor by his father. Nicola’s contract for a pulpit in the Siena cathedral names Giovanni as a junior member of the studio by 1265. From this evidence, his birth date is placed around 1250. Inscriptions on two of Giovanni’s own works mention his place of birth as being Pisa.

Besides the Siena pulpit, it is known that Giovanni assisted his father on the Fontana Maggiore (great fountain) in Perugia and probably on the exterior, second-story sculpture of the Pisan baptistery. The emphatic Gothicism of his mature style can be identified in parts of these earlier commissions, and portions of them have been attributed to his hand. It has been suggested that his knowledge of French Gothic art was acquired during a trip to France between 1270 and 1276, but the evidence for such a visit is strictly stylistic. Alternatively, it is possible that he learned of the French style through a study of portable artworks such as ivory carvings and manuscript illuminations.

Lives’ Work

Nicola Pisano’s pulpit for the baptistery of Pisa demonstrates that in 1260 he was working in a heavily classicized style. The classical influence can be seen in his handling of draperies, the sculpting of bodies and heads, the emphasis on the human form, the technical virtuosity, and the sense of classical reserve that permeates the reliefs and statuettes. Specific sources for some of the figures can be found among ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan works. Nicola’s classicism was neither debased nor pastichelike but extended to the structure of the pulpit itself, the interest in space and form, and the depiction of narrative scenes as human dramas. The Pisa pulpit also reflects other influences, including Italian Romanesque sculpture, Italo-Byzantine painting, and French Gothicism.

The pulpit at Pisa marked a distinct development beyond the Romanesque style prevalent in Italy at the time, a style characterized by flattened forms, shallow cutting, schematic draperies, and little illusion of three-dimensional space. Nicola’s talent, however, was not static. Within a few years of the completion of the Pisa pulpit, the French Gothic style began to influence his work heavily. This development can be seen in his next major commission, a pulpit for the cathedral in Siena, completed in 1268. In the relief sculpture and statuettes for this work, Nicola continued his emphasis on volumetric human form and retained an innate classicism, but he exploited the expressive and emotional possibilities inherent in the more fluid naturalism of the Gothic.

Nicola’s reputation rests on the achievement of these two pulpits, but he was involved in other commissions as well. He designed the tomb of Saint Dominic in San Domenico Maggiore at Bologna, the execution of which fell to his studio, most notably to Arnolfo di Cambio. In 1273, he built, or reconstructed, the altar dedicated to Saint James in the cathedral at Pistoia. In 1278, he completed work on the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia. He may also have been involved in architectural designs, in particular the arcade and sculpture on the second story of the baptistery in Pisa. There is no mention of him after 1278, and in 1284 he is documented as deceased.

By the time of his father’s death, Giovanni Pisano had become one of the most prominent artists in Italy. Sometime after March, 1284, he renounced his Pisan citizenship and became a citizen of Siena, where he worked as an architect and sculptor on the cathedral. By 1290, he is documented as capomaestro (supervisor of works) at the cathedral, a position that he retained until 1296. During this period, he designed a façade for the cathedral, and the lower portion may have been completed according to his plan. He also created sculptures of human and animal figures to decorate the façade. These statues are notable for their plasticity and movement. The figures were conceived with their designated positions on the façade in mind. Proportional distortions were imposed that would be optically resolved when viewed from below at a distance. The poses were planned to complement one another for a unified compositional effect. The figures reveal an expressive intensity that became the hallmark of Giovanni’s style.

Giovanni departed Siena under accusations of fiscal irregularities at the cathedral works. By 1297, he was back in Pisa as capomaestro of that town’s cathedral works, but he retained his Sienese citizenship and property. In 1301, he completed a pulpit for the Church of San Andrea in Pistoia. The next year, he began a pulpit for the Cathedral of Pisa that was completed in 1310. The sculpted portions of these two pulpits reveal an extreme expressive style and compositions marked by rhythmic patterns and advanced spatial considerations. Deep carving and protruding forms serve to deny the planar surface of the marble panel. In the Pisa pulpit, he once again composed the work with the spectator’s viewpoint in mind. Throughout the narrative reliefs of both pulpits, Giovanni manipulated naturalism for expressive purposes but managed to avoid overt distortion.

The supports for the Pisa pulpit include large sculpted figures whose style shows a retreat from the strong Gothic expressiveness of the earlier relief panels. A modifying restraint is evident, quite possibly the result of contact with the works of the early fourteenth century Florentine painter Giotto. This more composed style is also evident in one of Giovanni’s freestanding Madonnas, created about 1305 for the altar of the Arena Chapel in Padua. The same chapel contains Giotto’s greatest fresco cycle, painted between 1304 and 1312. Although Giovanni’s Madonna is clearly derived from French Gothic types, the emphasis on more subtle expression and dignified massing heralds a new artistic age.

Giovanni’s last known work was a monument to Margaret of Luxembourg in San Francesco di Castelletto at Genoa, undertaken in 1312. It was commissioned by the Hohenstaufen emperor Henry VII, a recent ally of Pisa, in honor of his wife, who had died in Genoa that year. Despite its current disassembled state, the central figure group of Margaret being awakened by two angels displays a subtle poignancy unique to Italian Gothic sculpture.

Documents show that Giovanni was still alive in 1314 but dead by 1318. He was buried in Siena.

Significance

Nicola Pisano and Giovanni Pisano are two late medieval Italian sculptors whose works reflect influences, intentions, and explorations that mark them as forerunners of the Italian Renaissance. Nicola’s first style demonstrated strongly classical tendencies that were later subordinated to the expressive naturalism of Gothicism. Giovanni’s sculpture was more consistently Gothic, but, like his father, he manipulated the Gothic idiom in the interest of naturalism, especially in the exploration of integrated, spatial compositions made up of volumetric forms. Along with the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano were largely responsible for freeing Italian sculpture from its long subordination to architecture. Their careers also mark the beginning of a noticeable evolution in the status of artists, and their signing of their works symbolically separates them from the anonymous craftsperson-sculptors of the Middle Ages. Both artists stand at the threshold of a new era of art, one that emphasized the personal, human qualities of images and narratives over didactic, symbolic concepts. The Pisanos’ compositional and interpretive innovations influenced the pictorial explorations of fourteenth century Italian artists. Along with the fourteenth century painters Giotto and Duccio di Buoninsegna, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano are considered the principal late medieval Italian artists whose works were proto-Renaissance in style.

Bibliography

Ayrton, Michael. Giovanni Pisano, Sculptor. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969. A lavish monograph written from an artist’s perspective. Introduction by the sculptor Henry Moore. More than three hundred photographs reproduce all the known and attributed works, with many detail shots. Diagrams, bibliography, and catalog notes on the plates. Also includes information on and photographs of Nicola Pisano’s work.

Crichton, G. H., and E. R. Crichton. Nicola Pisano and the Revival of Sculpture in Italy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1938. An early monograph, but still useful. Includes an extensive discussion of stylistic influences. Places Nicola within a historical and art historical context. An appendix lists and quotes the documents related to the birthplace controversy.

Dodsworth, Barbara W. The Arca di San Domenico. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. An examination of the work done by Nicola Pisano on the Arca di San Domenico in Bologna, Italy. Illustrated, with bibliography.

Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer. Nicola Pisano’s Arca di San Domenico and Its Legacy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. An analysis of Nicola Pisano’s Arca di San Domenico in Bologna and its influence. Illustrations, bibliography, and index

Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian Gothic Sculpture. Vol. 1 in An Introduction to Italian Sculpture. 4th ed. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. A standard study of the period. The text provides excellent stylistic perspectives on the artists’ careers. Includes photographic reproductions, biographical data, catalog entries, and a selective bibliography for Nicola and Giovanni Pisano and other sculptors of the late medieval period in Italy.

White, John. Art and Architecture in Italy: 1250-1400. 3d ed. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1993. A basic reference on late medieval Italian art. Contains chapters on Nicola Pisano and Giovanni Pisano that discuss all of their principal works as well as some undocumented attributions. Includes photographic reproductions, notes, and brief bibliography.