Chapter XXI: Appendix: I

_The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello_

Having tried to characterise Niccola Pisano's relation to early Italian art in the second chapter of this volume, I adverted to the recent doubts which have been thrown by very competent authorities upon Vasari's legend of this master. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, while discussing the question of his birthplace and his early training, observe, what is no doubt true, that there are no traces of good sculpture in Pisa antecedent to the Baptistery pulpit of 1260, and remark that for such a phenomenon as the sudden appearance of this masterpiece it is needful to seek some antecedents elsewhere.[408] This leads them to ask whether Niccola did not owe his origin and education to some other part of Italy. Finding at Ravello, near Amain, a pulpit sculptured in 1272 by Niccola di Bartolommeo da Foggia, they suggest that a school of stone-carvers may have flourished at Foggia, and that Niccola Pisano, in spite of his signing himself _Pisanus_ on the Baptistery pulpit, may have been an Apulian trained in that school. The arguments adduced in favour of that hypothesis are that Niccola's father, though commonly believed to have been Ser Pietro da Siena, was perhaps called Pietro di Apulia,[409] and that meritorious artists certainly existed at Foggia and Trani. Yet the resemblance of style between the pulpits at Ravello [1272] and Pisa [1260], if that indeed exists (whereof hereafter more must be said), might be used to prove that Niccola da Foggia learned his art from Niccola Pisano, instead of the contrary; nor again, supposing the Apulian school to have flourished before 1260, is it inconsistent with the tradition of Niccola's life that he should have learned the sculptor's craft while working in his youth at Naples. For the rest, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle dismiss the story of Pisano's studying the antique bas-reliefs at Pisa with contempt;[410] but they omit to notice the actual transcripts from those marbles introduced into his first pulpit. Again, they assume that the lunette at Lucca was one of his latest works, giving precedence to the pulpits of Pisa and Siena and the fountain of Perugia. A comparison of style no doubt renders this view plausible; for the lunette at Lucca is superior to any other of Pisano's works as a composition.

The full discussion of these points is rendered impossible by the want of contemporary information, and each student must, therefore, remain contented with his own hypothesis. Yet something can be said with regard to the Ravello pulpit that plays so important a part in the argument of the learned historians of Italian painting. Unless a strong similarity between it and Pisano's pulpits can be proved, their hypothesis carries with it no persuasion.

The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello is formed like an ambo of the antique type. That is to say, it is a long parallelogram with flat sides, raised upon pillars, and approached by a flight of steps. These steps are enclosed within richly-ornamented walls, and stand distinct from the pulpit; a short bridge connects the two. The six pillars supporting the ambo itself are slender twisted columns with classic capitals. Three rest on lions, three on lionesses, admirably carved in different attitudes. A small projection on the north side of the pulpit sustains an eagle standing on a pillar, and spreading out his wings to bear an open book. On the arch over the entrance to the staircase projects the head of Sigelgaita, wife of Niccola Rufolo, the donor of the pulpit to the church, sculptured in the style of the Roman decadence, between two profile medallions in low relief.[411] The material of the whole is fair white marble, enriched with mosaics, and wrought into beautiful scroll-work of acanthus leaves and other Romanesque adornments. An inscription, "_Ego Magister Nicolaus de Bartholomeo de Fogia Marmorarius hoc opus feci_;" and another, "_Lapsis millenis bis centum bisque trigenis XPI. bissenis annis ab origine plenis_," indicate the artist's name and the date of the work.

It is difficult to understand how anyone could trace such a resemblance between this rectangular ambo and the hexagonal structure in the Pisan Baptistery as would justify them in asserting both to be the products of the same school. The pulpit of Niccola da Foggia does not materially differ from other ambones in Italy--from several, for instance, in Amalfi and Ravello; while the distinctive features of Niccola Pisano's work--the combination of classically studied bas-reliefs with Gothic principles of construction, the feeling for artistic unity in the composition of groups, the mastery over plastic form, and the detached allegorical figures--are noticeable only by their total absence from it. What is left by way of similarity is a sculpturesque refinement in Sigelgaita's portrait, not unworthy of Pisano's own chisel. This, however, is but a slender point whereon to base so large a pyramid of pure conjecture. Surely we must look elsewhere than at Ravello or at Foggia for the origin of Niccola Pisano.

Why then should we reject tradition in this instance? Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle reply; because the sculpture of no Tuscan city before his period is good enough to have led up to him. Yet this may be contested; and at all events it will not be easy to prove from the Ravello head of Sigelgaita that a more advanced school existed in the south. The fact is that the art of the stone-carvers or _marmorarii_ had never entirely died out since the days of Roman greatness; nor was Niccola without respectable predecessors in the very town of Lucca, where he produced the first masterpiece of modern sculpture. The circular font of S. Frediano, for example, carved with figures in high relief by a certain Robertus of the twelfth century, combines the Romanesque mannerism with the _naïveté_ of mediaeval fancy. I might point in particular to two knights seated on one horse in what I take to be the company of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, as an instance of a successful attempt to escape from the formalism of a decayed style. At the same time the general effect of the embossed work of this font is fine; nor do we fail to perceive that the artist retained some portion of the classic feeling for grandiose and monumental composition. Far less noteworthy, yet still not utterly despicable, is the bas-relief of Biduinus over the side-door of S. Salvatore at Lucca. What Niccola added of indefeasibly his own to the style of these continuators of a dead tradition, was feeling for the beauty of classical work in a good age, and through that feeling a more perfect sympathy with nature. It is just at this point that the old tale about the sarcophagus of the Countess Beatrice conveys not only the letter but the spirit of the fact. Niccola's genius, no less vivid and life-giving than that of Giotto, infused into the hard and formal manner of his immediate predecessors true nature and true art. Between the bas-relief of S. Salvatore and the bas-relief over the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, there is indeed a broad gulf, yet such as might have been passed at one bound by a master into whose soul the beauty of a fragment of Greek art had sunk, and who had received at his birth the gift of a creative genius.

FOOTNOTES:

[408] _History of Painting in Italy_, vol. i. chap. iv.

[409] _Loc. cit_. p. 127, note.

[410] _Loc. cit._ p. 127.

[411] Mr. Perkins, following the suggestion of Panza, in his _Istoria dell' Antica Republica d'Amalfi_, is inclined to think that this head represents, not Sigelgaita, but Joanna II. of Naples, and is therefore more than a century later in date than the pulpit. See _Italian Sculptors_, p. 51.