Andrea Pisano

“ The face of the central figure is most noble, and all the work good, but not delicate; it is like original work of the master whose design No. 8 might be a restoration.
14 Dædalus.
Andrea Pisano again; the head superb, founded on Greek models, feathers of wings wrought with extreme care; but with no precision of arrangement or feeling. How far intentional in awkwardness, I cannot say; but note the good mechanism of the whole plan, with strong standing board for the feet. ”

“ Andrea Pisano had given some attention to architecture in his youth; and the commune of Florence found occasion to employ him in that art, when, Arnolfo being dead, and Giotto absent, they selected him to prepare designs for the castle of Scarperia, situate in the Mugello, at the foot of the Alps. Some affirm, but I will not vouch for the truth of the assertion, that Andrea passed a year in Venice, "where he executed, in sculpture, certain small marble figures, which are to be seen on the fagade of St. ”

“ The time of his birth is not known; he died before 1361. His works are pleasing, and he especially excelled in drapery. They are not numerous, and are seen in the churches of Pisa.
But by far the most important pupil of Andrea Pisano, and, indeed, the most important Tuscan master of the end of the fourteenth century, was Andrea Arcagnuolo di Cione, commonly called Andrea Orcagna (1329-1376?) . ”

“ Niccolò’s son, Giovanni, became a citizen of Siena, and was chief architect of the Duomo during the two closing decades of the century. Stimulated by their presence and example, there rose an independent school of Sienese sculptors, which flourished from the end of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century—a school which chronologically succeeds to that founded by Niccolò Pisano, and anticipates the rise of the Florentine school under Andrea Pisano’s influence. ”

“ It was a merchant guild which thought happily of giving to Florence the bronze gates to the baptistery of San Giovanni or St John the Baptist, attached to the Cathedral. After some competition the gates were intrusted to Andrea Pisano, one of a great group of painters, sculptors, and architects linked together and named, as so often happened in Italy, for their place of birth, Pisa. Andrea executed a series of beautiful reliefs from the life of John the Baptist, which were cast in 1330, gilt, and placed in the centre door-way. ”

“ Andrea Pisano had two sons, Nino and Tommaso—both, especially the former, sculptors of considerable ability Nino was very successful in his statues of the Madonna and Child, which are full of human feeling and soft loveliness-a perfect embodiment of the Catholic ideal of the Divine Mother. Andrea's chief pupil was Andrea di Cione, better known as Orcagna (q.v.) ”

“ A classic treatment is noticeable in the doorway of the Baptistery of Florence by Andrea Pisano (1330) , probably influenced by Giotto, in whose paintings are found the representation of imaginary buildings in which Gothic and Classic details are mixed up together. ”

“ A man of universal genius was called in to execute the tabernacle: Andrea Orcagna, a pupil probably of Andrea Pisano, and also much influenced by Giotto, whom though he had not known he idolized, and one who, like Michelangelo later, was not only a painter and sculptor but an architect and a poet. ”

“ Its heroes of greatest name are Arnolfo di Cambio, Giotto di Bondone, Andrea Pisano, Andrea di Cione or Orcagna (the "Archangel") , and, lastly and but recently recognised, Francesco Talenti.
"No Italian architect," says Addington Symonds, "has enjoyed the proud privilege of stamping his own individuality more strongly on his native city than Arnolfo." At present, the walls of the city (or what remains of them) –le mura di Fiorenza which Lapo Gianni would fain see inargentate–and the bulk of the Palazzo Vecchio and Santa Croce, alone represent Arnolfo's work. ”

“ Giotto, and Mino da Fiesole, would have been what it was, if Niccola had been buried in his sarcophagus; and this is sufficiently proved by Giotto's remaining entirely uninfluenced by the educated excellence of Andrea Pisano, while he gradually bent the Pisan down to his own uncompromising simplicity. If, as Lord Lindsay asserts, "Giotto had learned from the works of Niccola the grand principle of Christian art," the sculptures of the Campanile of Florence would not now have stood forth in contrasted awfulness of simplicity, beside those of the south door of the Baptistery. ”

“ Italian sculpture, as well as Italian painting, is greatly indebted to Giotto, for it was he who designed the reliefs for the bronze gates of the baptistery at Florence. These designs were executed in masterly style by Andrea Pisano, and may be looked upon as the starting-point of Italian sculpture. In fact, it is as the father of modern art rather than as a perfect painter that the name of Giotto ought to be held in reverence. ”

“ The figure is between a St John and a St Peter in marble, the head of the latter being a portrait of Andrea. Nino also made two marble statues for an altar of S. Caterina at Pisa—that is to say, the Madonna and an angel in an Annunciation, executed, like his other works, with such care that they may be considered as the best productions of those times. On the base beneath this Madonna Nino carved the following words: "On the first day of February 1370;" and beneath the angel: "Nino, son of Andrea Pisano, made these figures." ”

“ The sculptor Jacopo, son of Maestro Piero di Filippo of La Quercia, a place in the district of Siena, was the first—after Andrea Pisano, Orcagna, and the others mentioned above—who, labouring in sculpture with greater zeal and diligence, began to show that it was possible to make an approach to nature, and the first who encouraged the others to hope to be able in a certain measure to equal her. ”

“ We seldom find a man distinguishing himself in one branch of art, who cannot readily acquire the knowledge of others, more especially of those immediately connected with that to which his attention was first devoted, and which proceed, so to speak, from the same source. We have a case in point exhibited by the Florentine Orgagna, who was at once a painter, sculptor, architect, and poet, as will hereafter appear. Born in Florence, Andrea commenced the study of sculpture while still but a child, under Andrea Pisano, [2] and to this he devoted himself earnestly for some years. ”

“ For the rest, nothing could be more probable, in the confused and perpetually false mass of Florentine tradition, than the preservation of the memory of Giotto's carving his own two trades, and the forgetfulness, or quite as likely ignorance, of the part he took with Andrea Pisano in the initial sculptures. I now take up the series of subjects at the point where we broke off, to trace their chain of philosophy to its close. To Geometry, which gives to every man his possession of house and land, succeed 21, Sculpture, and 22, Painting, the adornments of permanent habitation. ”

“ We find his work, however, sadly damaged it is true, and really his perhaps only in outline, in the Strozzi chapel here, the lofty chapel of north transept, where he has painted on the wall facing the entrance the Last Judgment, while to the left you may see Paradise, to the right the Inferno. The pupil of Giotto and of Andrea Pisano, Orcagna is the most important artist of his time, the one vital link in the chain that unites Masolino with Giotto. He was a universal artist, practising as an architect and goldsmith no less than as a painter. ”

“ Francis, was much more favourable to the painter’s art than to that of the sculptor. We have seen that Giotto was able to give adequate expression to the dominant ideas of his age with much greater freedom than such an artist as Andrea Pisano. This general tendency unfavourable to the [Pg 162] growth of a vigorous school of Italian sculpture, continued for a long time. Its effect in turning the budding artist’s dreams towards painting or influencing his work in unsculpturesque fashion cannot be doubted. ”

“ For subtlety of execution, note the texture of wooden block under anvil, and of its iron hoop.
The workman's face is the best sermon on the dignity of labour yet spoken by thoughtful man. Liberal Parliaments and fraternal Reformers have nothing essential to say more.
7. Noah.
Andrea Pisano's again, more or less imitative of Giotto's work.
8. Astronomy.
We have a new hand here altogether. The hair and drapery bad; the face expressive, but blunt in cutting; the small upper heads, necessarily little more than blocked out, on the small scale ”

“ Andrea's merit was indeed very great; his works, compared with those of Giovanni and Niccola Pisano, exhibit a progress in design, grace, composition and mechanical execution, at first sight unaccountable—a chasm yawns between them, deep and broad, over which the younger artist seems to have leapt at a bound,—the stream that sank into the earth at Pisa emerges a river at Florence. The solution of the mystery lies in the peculiar plasticity of Andrea's genius, and the ascendency acquired over it by Giotto, although a younger man, from the first moment they came into contact. ”

“ THE CREATION OF MAN
(After a relief, by Andrea Pisano, on the Campanile, Florence)
View larger image
Andrea was also made use of in matters of architecture by Gualtieri, Duke of Athens and Tyrant of the Florentines, who made him enlarge the square, and caused him, in order to safeguard himself in his palace, to secure all the lower windows on the first floor (where to-day is the Sala de' Dugento) with iron bars, square and very strong. The said Duke also added, opposite S. Pietro Scheraggio, the walls of [Pg 129] rustic work that are beside the palace, in order to enlarge it ”

“ The execution is, in the main, Andrea Pisano's; but there is a constant tradition that some of the reliefs are from Giotto's own hand. Antonio Pucci, in the eighty-fifth canto of his Centiloquio, distinctly states that Giotto carved the earlier ones, i primi intagli fe con bello stile, and Pucci was almost Giotto's contemporary. "Pastoral life," "Jubal," "Tubal Cain," "Sculpture," "Painting," are the special subjects which it is most plausible, or perhaps most attractive, to ascribe to him.
On the western side we have the creation of Man, the creation of Woman ”

“ Andrea also left a son, called Nino, who devoted himself to sculpture. His first work was executed in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, where he finished a Madonna in marble, commenced by his father, [16] and which is now within the side door, near the chapel of the Minerbetti. [17] From Florence Nino proceeded to Pisa, where he executed a half-figure of the Virgin in marble, at the Spina: she is suckling the Child, who is wrapped in fine linen. ”

“ Born at Pontedera, the pupil of Giovanni Pisano, this great and lovable artist has been robbed of much that belongs to him. Vasari tells us—and for long we believed him—that Giotto helped him to design the gate of the Baptistery; and again, that Giotto designed these reliefs for Andrea to carve and found. It might seem impossible to believe that the greatest sculptor then living, fresh from a great triumph, would have consented to use the design of a painter, even though he were Giotto. ”

“ Andrea left many disciples; among others, Tommaso Pisano, architect and sculptor, who finished the Chapel of the Campo Santo and added the finishing touch to the Campanile of the Duomo—namely, that final part wherein are the bells. Tommaso is believed to have been the son of Andrea, this being found written in the panel of the high-altar of S. Francesco in Pisa, wherein there is, carved in half-relief, a Madonna, with other Saints made by him, and below these his name and that of his father. ”

“ The present church is for the most part a work of the twelfth century, and certainly not the work of Niccolò Pisano. The façade, like the rest of the church, has suffered an unfortunate restoration. The marble loggia is a work of the fifteenth century, and the two statues are, one of S. Jacopo, by Scarpellino, the other of S. Zenone, by Andrea Vaccà. The beautiful terra-cotta over the great door of Madonna and Child with Angels, and the roof above, are the work of Andrea della Robbia. The frescoes of the story of S. Jacopo are fourteenth-century work of Giovanni Balducci the Pisan. ”

“ They wandered about looking at the old pictures, seeking especially those by Andrea del Sarto, who was the only artist familiar to them, whose paintings are there. They touched and set swinging the bronze lamp which hangs in the nave, and is said to have suggested to Galileo (who was born in Pisa) , his first idea of the pendulum.
Then, going out, they climbed the famous Leaning Tower, and visited the Baptistery, where is Niccolo Pisano's wonderful sculptured marble pulpit. ”

“ Sculpture, which in the school of Niccola Pisano had been subordinate to architecture, became a sub-species of painting in the hands of Andrea.
It was thus, as I have elsewhere stated, that the twofold doom of plastic art in Italy was accomplished. In order to embody the ideas of Christianity, art had to think more of expression than of pure form. Expression is the special sphere of painting; and therefore sculpture followed the lead of the sister art, as soon as painting was strong enough to give that lead, instead of remaining, as in Greece, the mistress of her own domain. ”

“ Pisano and Fabriano also must both have died before Andrea Castagno; the whole series of dates in this life is indeed more than usiially inaccurate: for their rectification, and for various details respecting the two artists, the reader is referred to Matfei, Verona IllvMrata, and to Ricci, Memorie Storiche delle Arti e degli Artisti della Marcadi Ancona. ”