Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts (eBook)

 CHAPTER III SCULPTURE

Niccola Pisano--Obscurity of the Sources for a History of Early Italian Sculpture--Vasari's Legend of Pisano--Deposition from the Cross at Lucca--Study of Nature and the Antique--Sarcophagus at Pisa--Pisan Pulpit--Niccola's School--Giovanni Pisano--Pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja--Fragments of his work at Pisa--Tomb of Benedict XI. at Perugia--Bas-reliefs at Orvieto--Andrea Pisano--Relation of Sculpture to Painting--Giotto--Subordination of Sculpture to Architecture in Italy--Pisano's Influence in Venice--Balduccio of Pisa--Orcagna--The Tabernacle of Orsammichele--The Gates of the Florentine Baptistery --Competition of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and Della Quercia--Comparison of Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's Trial-pieces--Comparison of Ghiberti and Della Quercia--The Bas-reliefs of S. Petronio--Ghiberti's Education--His Pictorial Style in Bas-relief--His Feeling for the Antique--Donatello--Early Visit to Rome--Christian Subjects--Realistic Treatment--S. George and David--Judith--Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata--Influence of Donatello's Naturalism--Andrea Verocchio--His David--Statue of Colleoni--Alessandro Leopardi--Lionardo's Statue of Francesco Sforza--The Pollajuoli--Tombs of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII.--Luca della Robbia--His Treatment of Glazed Earthenware--Agostino di Duccio--The Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia--Antonio Rossellino--Matteo Civitali--Mino da Fiesole--Benedetto da Majano--Characteristics and Masterpieces of this Group--Sepulchral Monuments--Andrea Contucci's Tombs in S. Maria del Popolo--Desiderio da Settignano--Sculpture in S. Francesco at Rimini--Venetian Sculpture--Verona--Guido Mazzoni of Modena--Certosa of Pavia--Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo--Sansovino at Venice--Pagan Sculpture--Michael Angelo's Scholars--Baccio Bandinelli--Bartolommeo Ammanati--Cellini--Gian Bologna--Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture.

 In the procession of the fine arts, sculpture always follows close upon the steps of architecture, and at first appears in some sense as her handmaid. Mediaeval Italy found her Pheidias in a great man of Pisan origin, born during the first decade of the thirteenth century. It was Niccola Pisano, architect and sculptor, who first breathed with the breath of genius life into the dead forms of plastic art. From him we date the dawn of the aesthetical Renaissance with the same certainty as from Petrarch that of humanism; for he determined the direction not only of sculpture but also of painting in Italy. To quote the language of Lord Lindsay's panegyric: "Neither Dante nor Shakspere can boast such extent and durability of influence; for whatever of highest excellence has been achieved in sculpture and painting, not in Italy only but throughout Europe, has been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following up the principle which he first struck out."[56] In truth, Niccola Pisano put the artist on the right track of combining the study of antiquity with the study of nature; and to him belongs the credit not merely of his own achievement, considerable as that may be, but also of the work of his immediate scholars and of all who learned from him to portray life. From Niccola Pisano onward to Michael Angelo and Cellini we trace one genealogy of sculptors, who, though they carried art beyond the sphere of his invention, looked back to him as their progenitor. The man who first emancipated sculpture from servile bondage, and opened a way for the attainment of true beauty, would by the Greeks have been honoured with a special cultas as the Hero Eponym of art. It remains for us after our own fashion to pay some such homage to Pisano.

The chief difficulty with which the student of early art and literature has to deal, is the insufficiency of positive information. Instead of accurate dates and well-established facts he finds a legend, rich apparently in detail, but liable at every point to doubt, and subject to attack by plausible conjecture. In the absence of contemporary documents and other trustworthy sources of instruction, he is tempted to substitute his own hypotheses for tradition and to reconstruct the faulty outlines of forgotten history according to his own ideas of fitness. The Germans have been our masters in this species of destructive, dubitative, restorative criticism; and it is undoubtedly flattering to the historian's vanity to constitute himself a judge and arbiter in cases where tact and ingenuity may claim to sift the scattered fragment of confused narration. Yet to resist this temptation is in many cases a plain and simple duty. Tradition, when not positively disproved, should be allowed to have its full value; and a sounder historic sense is exercised in adopting its testimony with due caution, than in recklessly rejecting it and substituting guesses which the lack of knowledge renders unsubstantial. Tradition may err about dates, details, and names. It is just here that antiquarian research can render valuable help. But there are occasions when the perusal of documents and the exercise of what is called the higher criticism afford no surer basis for opinion. If in such cases a legend has been formed and recorded, the student will advance further toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and that his cunning will suffice to supply the missing clue.[57]

Thus much I have said by way of preface to what follows upon Niccola Pisano. Almost all we know about him is derived from a couple of inscriptions, a few contracts, and his Life by Giorgio Vasari. It is clear that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions. Much of Niccola's biography reads like a legend in his pages--the popular and oral tradition of a great man, whose panegyric it was more easy in the sixteenth century to adorn with rhetoric than to chronicle the details of his life with scrupulous fidelity. A well-founded conviction of Vasari's frequent inaccuracy has induced recent critics to call in question many hitherto accepted points about the nationality and training of Pisano. The discussion, of their arguments I leave for the appendix, contenting myself at present with relating so much of Vasari's legend as cannot, I think, reasonably be rejected.[58]

Before the sculptor appeared in Niccola Pisano, he was already a famous architect; and it must always be remembered that he and his school subordinated the plastic to the constructive arts. It was not until the year 1233, or 1237, according to different modern calculations, that he executed his first masterpiece in sculpture.[59] This was a "Deposition from the Cross," in high relief, placed in a lunette over one of the side doors of S. Martino at Lucca. The noble forms of this group, the largeness of its style, the breadth of drapery and freedom of action it displays, but, above all, the unity of its design, proclaimed that a new era had begun for art. In order to appreciate the importance of this relief, it is only necessary to compare it with the processional treatment of similar subjects upon early Christian sarcophagi, where each figure stands up stiff and separate, nor can the controlling and combining artist's thought be traced in any effort after composition. Ever since the silver age of Hadrian, when a Bithynian slave by his beauty gave a final impulse to the Genius of Greece, sculpture had been gradually declining until nothing was left but a formal repetition of conventional outlines. The so-called Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood, fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrecoverable 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 combat; and contemporaneously with Niccola Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the North were adorning the facades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of loveliness.[60] 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 to independence. A fresh start, at once conscious and scientific, was imperatively demanded. This new beginning sculpture took in the brain of Niccola Pisano, who returned from the bye-paths of his predecessors to the free field of nature, and who learned precious lessons from the fragments of classical sculpture existing in his native town. As though to prove the essential dependence of the modern revival upon the recovery of antique culture, we find that his genius, in spite of its powerful originality and profoundly Christian bias, required the confirmation which could only be derived from Graeco-Roman precedent. In the Campo Santo at Pisa may still be seen a sarcophagus representing the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, where once reposed the dust of Beatrice, the mother of the pious Countess Matilda of Tuscany. Studying the heroic nudities and noble attitudes of this bas-relief, Niccola rediscovered the right way of art--not by merely copying his model, but by divining the secret of the grand style. His work at Pisa contains abundant evidence that, while he could not wholly free himself from the defects of the later Romanesque manner, betrayed by his choice of short and square-set types, he nevertheless learned from the antique how to aim at beauty and freedom in his imitation of the living human form. A marble vase, sculptured with Indian Bacchus and his train...