204 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

door of the Duomo for many centuries as the tomb of the Countess Beatrice, mother of the celebrated Matilda, has been recently removed to the Campo Santo. The front is sculptured in bas-relief, in two compartments, the one representing Hippolytus rejecting the suit of Phædra, the other his departure for the chase:-such at least is the most plausible interpretation. The sculpture, if not super-excellent, is substantially good, and the benefit derived from it by Niccola is perceptible on the slightest examination of his works. Other remains of antiquity are preserved at Pisa, which he may have also studied, but this was the classic well from which he drew those waters which became wine when poured into the hallowing chalice of Christianity. I need scarcely add that the mere presence of such models would have availed little, had not nature endowed him with the quick eye and the intuitive apprehension of genius, together with a purity of taste which taught him how to select, how to modify and how to reinspire the germs of excellence thus presented to him.”-Vol. ii. pp. 104, 105.

36. But whatever characters peculiarly classical were impressed upon Niccola by this study, died out gradually among his scholars; and in Orcagna the Byzantine manner finally triumphed, leading the way to the purely Christian sculpture of the school of Fiesole, in its turn swept away by the returning wave of classicalism. The sculpture of Orcagna, Giotto, and Mino da Fiesole, would have been what it was, if Niccola had been buried in his sarcophagus;¹ and this is sufficiently proved by Giotto’s remaining entirely uninfluenced by the educated excellence of Andrea Pisano,² 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.

permits, the words of my first master in Italian art, Lord Lindsay” (the words, being a passage (pp. 101-102) preceding the one here quoted); while in §§ 19-21 Ruskin describes the sarcophagus here mentioned by Lord Lindsay.]

¹ [For the dates and succession of the artists mentioned here, see the table and remarks in Ariadne Florentina, §§ 48-54; and compare Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xx. §§ 20, 21, where the succession of Italian sculpture is again traced; for the sculpture of Giotto, see Mornings in Florence, §§ 129-130, and Ariadne Florentina, § 58; for Mino da Fiesole, Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. pp. 101 n., 280), and see also below, § 39.]

² [Andrea da Pontadera (about 1270-1348) was the chief pupil of Giovanni (son of Niccola) Pisano; Andrea’s chief pupil was Orcagna. For a notice of Andrea’s bas-reliefs on the Campanile, see Mornings in Florence, §§ 133-135, 137, 144.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]