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Were we to trust internal evidence the evidence of style and handling we should be inclined to name this not the earliest but the latest and ripest of Pisano's works. It may be suggested in passing that the form of the lunette was favourable to the composition by forcing a gradation in the figures from the centre to either side.
While every one stood dismayed and wondering, the begrimed scullion boy timidly approached the distressed head-servant, and said, "If you will let me try, I think I can make something that will do." "You!" exclaimed the servant; "and who are you?" "I am Antonio Canova, Pisano's grandson," answered the pale-faced little fellow.
So he puts the line of forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its straight line; and the expression then becomes, "Now, be very careful, and mind what I say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better? Be it so; only, it is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern Italian's. Next, take the head of Eve.
The impression left by Pisano's doors is akin to that left by reading the New Testament; but Ghiberti makes everything happier than that. Two scenes both on the level of the eye I particularly like: the "Annunciation," with its little, lithe, reluctant Virgin, and the "Adoration". The border of the Pisano doors is, I think, finer than that of Ghiberti's; but it is a later work.
Then they went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent pulpit of creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of lions, and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary sound which their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he seemed to be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would and almost "answer back."
But you are, I trust, now in some degree persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You remember I first begun this large digression when it became a question with us why some of Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed at Perugia.
When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which, if you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus, and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves carried on the backs of as many animals.
It so happened that Signor Faliero, the head of a noble Venetian family, and a man of rare understanding in art, had a place near Pisano's house, and at certain seasons the nobleman entertained many distinguished guests there.
The tiled roof projecting in the shadow above, protects the first Ceramicus-home. I think the women are meant to be carrying some kind of wicker or reed-bound water-vessel. The Potter's servant explains to them the extreme advantages of the new invention. I can't make any conjecture about the author of this piece. Riding. Again Andrea Pisano's, it seems to me.
It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County Bank: Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and bearing other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.
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