Part 23 (2/2)

Symonds,[192] speaking of this stage of art, says--”The so-called Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood (it was a childhood which grew and developed into virility, however), fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrevocable past. It is true indeed that unknown mediaeval carvers had shown an instinct for the beautiful, as well as great fertility of grotesque invention. The facades of Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and sometimes forcibly dramatic groups of animals and men in contest; and contemporaneously with Niccol Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the north were adorning the facades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of loveliness. Yet the founder of a line of progressive artists had not arisen, and except in Italy the conditions were still wanting under which alone the plastic arts could attain independence.” Here Symonds goes on to speak of Niccol Pisano, as the fountain-head of sculpture.

And now we can no longer evade the knotty question of who and what Niccol was, where did he arise from, and where was he trained in art?

There are always those conflicting doc.u.ments which Milanesi found to be reconciled. The first, in the archives of the Opera di S. Jacopo at Pistoja, dated July 11, 1272, which runs--_Magister Nichola pisa.n.u.s, filius Petri de_--(here is an illegible word which Ciampi reads as _Senis_[193]). He chose this reading because another doc.u.ment dated November 13, 1272, styles ”Niccol” Magister Nichola, quondam Petri de (Senis) Ser Blasii pisa ... (_hiatus_).

Milanesi, however, who found at Siena the contract for Niccol's pulpit there, dated October 5, 1266, says the word _Senis_ should be read _Sancti_, for in the Sienese contract the words are plainly--_Magister Niccolus de parroccia ecclesie sancti Blasii de ponte de Pisis, etc. etc._ In another doc.u.ment also at Siena, in which Niccol is commanded to send for his pupil Arnolfo to work with him, we get _Magistrum Nicholam de Apulia_. In two others of the next year, _Magister Niccholus olim Petri lapidum de Pisis_. Now all this is very puzzling, and yet being doc.u.mentary it must all be true. We will put Siena entirely out of the question, the word proving to be a misreading of _Sancti_, so that instead of the second doc.u.ment meaning Niccol son of the late Peter son of Ser Blasius or Biagio of Siena, it must read Niccol son of Peter of the parish of St. Blasius at Pisa. We have then the two different nationalities of his father Pietro--Pisa and Apulia--to account for. Milanesi suggests that Apulia means a little place near Lucca called Puglia.

The further light we have found thrown on the peregrinations of _Magistri_ of the guild may a.s.sist us to reconcile the conflicting statements. It is certain, as we said before, that Niccol Pisano was a _Magister_ of the guild, and being a man of genius he became one of its most important members. His members.h.i.+p was moreover hereditary; his father had been also a _Magister lapidum_. Now the Comacines had a lodge in Apulia, from the time of the Longobards, and traces of it still remained after 1100, in a small colony in the valley of aeterno, which preserved as a kind of monopoly the art of building.[194]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAPTISMAL FONT IN CHURCH OF S. FREDIANO, LUCCA. BY MAGISTER ROBERTO, 12TH CENTURY.

_See page 246._]

The church of S. Sofia at Beneventum, A.D. 788, and the monastery of S. Pietro were built by them, as well as the later cathedrals of Trani, Bari, and Ruvo. The latter still retains its ancient Lombard facade covered with figures of animals, the portal being flanked by columns surmounted by a fine rose window. When the Normans succeeded the Longobards and Saracens in Apulia, the Masonic Guild was still more busy there, and it was very probable that Pietro the sculptor worked in Apulia under the Norman dynasty, with many of his brethren. I am told that there is in Bari cathedral a pulpit of the same form as that by Niccol, but of an earlier date. This is a significant proof of Niccol's early training in Apulia, probably under his own father, as was the custom of the guild. It would also account for the Saracenic touch in his arches and ornamentation. The lions under the columns were used by the Masonic Guild a century before Niccol's time, so it is evident they were not, as Ruskin and others suppose, borrowed from the Saracens by Niccol. There is a most interesting pulpit of the older square form at Groppoli near Pistoja, dated 1194, with lions beneath the pillars. It offers one of the very early specimens of the sculptured scriptural story. The panels represent the ”Nativity of Christ” and the ”Flight into Egypt,” both most navely designed. The square pulpit of Guido da Como in S.

Bartolommeo at Pistoja is dated A.D. 1250, and shows the immense improvement art had made in those sixty years. In some ways Guido da Como quite equals Niccol. He does not strain after the cla.s.sic, but there is great and simple dignity, and even grace in his figures, some of which are almost worthy of Fra Angelico. It was ten years after Guido's lion-pillared pulpit was finished, that we find Niccol--who had for some years been working at Pisa, where he was then domiciled--sculpturing his famous pulpit there, and though altering the form from square to octagon, using the same symbolism, and in many ways the same treatment of his subject, as Guido had done before him.

It would be a suggestive proof of the same influence in training, to compare the panels representing the Nativity, in the three pulpits.

The Lombard one at Groppoli, Guido da Como's at Pistoja, and Niccol's at Pisa, and one might add a fourth, _i.e._ Giovanni Pisano's pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja, which is in some respects an advance on his father's design, although it is evidently not only inspired, but almost copied from it. There are in all four, the same kind of _lectis_ for bed, the same cows, out of perspective, high up in the background, and in the two last the same treatment of drapery. In some ways, however, Niccol has pa.s.sed far beyond Guido. While Guido followed his forefathers' traditions, Niccol had been first revelling in the richness of Saracenic types in Apulia, and then living among the cla.s.sic spoils of Pisa, where Diotisalvi had worked before him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULPIT IN THE CHURCH OF GROPPOLI NEAR PISTOJA. A.D.

1194.

_See page 249._]

His school at Pisa inaugurated a revival which was to change art for all the world. Yet it was only a step and not a sudden leap. He was no ancestorless genius springing from darkness and chaos, but a link in the chain of art from which in him a new strand departed, leading towards Donatello and Ghiberti. He took the forms of his sect, but improved and freed them; he held to the traditional symbolism of his guild, but cla.s.sicized and enriched it. His greatest advance was in the modelling of the human figure, and here his cla.s.sic models helped him. One suspects that he depended much on those models, for where he had no antique to copy from, he degenerated into the mediaevalism of his fraternity. The mixture of the two styles is very apparent in the different panels of his pulpit, some of which look as if they had come from Antonine's column, while others are heavier and less graceful by far than Guido da Como's simple natural figures. The fact was, that in his time the whole guild was developing under the freer conditions of art, and Niccol was one of its leading masters, and endowed with especial talent.

With him the Romanesque period closes, and the Italian Gothic begins.

Led by him the Comacines in Tuscany left the rude, distorted images and meaningless monsters behind, and marched on towards the perfection of sculpture of the human form as shown by Donatello and Michael Angelo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULPIT IN SIENA CATHEDRAL. BY NICCOL PISANO. A.D.

1266.

_See page 250._]

Among the Comacines in Lombardy the same change was in progress.

Jacopo Porrata, working at nearly the same time, carved the life-like prophets and bas-relief on the facade of the cathedral of Cremona, which bears the legend, ”Magister Jacobus Porrata de c.u.mis fecit hanc rotam MCCLXXIIII.”

Antonio de Frix of Como, working in concert with Meo di Checco, carved the beautiful roof of the Duomo at Ferrara, while other Masters were sculpturing sacred stories on pulpits and doorways, vestibules and decorations in many a church which their forerunners had built.

With the development of the Gothic, the guild again changed the style of their ornamentation.

The pointed gable over the circular arch was one of the first signs of this change. You see it in Siena, Orvieto, Florence, and the fourteenth-century porches in Lombardy.

The gable gave an opening for statuary, floriated crockets, and ornate pinnacles; the pointed arch opened a way to beautiful tracery; the upward shaft and pilaster afforded s.p.a.ce for the ornate tabernacle or saint-filled niche; for the sculptor-architect never let an inch go plain which could be effectively sculptured.

Between the solid Lombard round arch and the pointed traceried one stands the cusping of the circular arch. Ruskin credits Niccol Pisano also with this; saying grandiloquently that ”in the five cusped arches of Niccol's pulpit you see the first Gothic Christian architecture ... the change, in a word, for all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens cathedral. For Italy it means the rise of her Gothic dynasty--it means the Duomo of Milan instead of the Temple of Paestum.”[195] This is very poetic, but it will not bear a.n.a.lysis.

The cusps of Niccol's arches were by no means the first to be seen in Italy; we find them in several churches of the twelfth century; and as for Amiens cathedral, that was nearly completed when Niccol's pulpit was carved.

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