"it inspired artists with a laudable emulation to apply to sculpture more assiduously than they had before done," as we are informed by Vasari. Niccola did not attain to what he aspired. The compositions are sometimes crowded, the figures are often badly designed, and shew more diligence than expression. His name, however, will always mark an era in the history of design, because he first led artists into the true path by the introduction of a better standard. Reform in any branch of study invariably depends on some rule, which, promulgated and adopted by the schools, gradually produces a general revolution in opinion, and opens a new field to the exertions of a succeeding age.
About 1231, he sculptured at Bologna the urn of San Domenico, and from this, as a remarkable event, he was named "Niccola of the Urn." He afterwards executed in a much superior style, the Last Judgment, for the cathedral of Orvieto, and the pulpit in the church of San Giovanni, at Pisa; works that demonstrate to the world that design, invention, and composition, received from him a new existence. He was succeeded by Arnolfo Florentino, his scholar, the sculptor of the tomb of Boniface VIII. in San Pietro at Rome; and by his son Giovanni, who executed the monuments of Urban IV. and of Benedict IX. in Perugia. He afterwards completed the great altar of San Donato, at Arezzo, the cost of which was thirty thousand gold florins; besides many other works which remain in Naples and in several cities of Tuscany. Andrea Pisano was his associate, and probably also his disciple in Perugia, who, after establishing himself in Florence, ornamented with statues the cathedral and the church of San Giovanni in that city; and in twenty-two years finished the great gate of bronze "to which we are indebted for all that is excellent, difficult, or beautiful in the other two, which are the workmanship of succeeding artists." He was, in fact, the founder of that great school that successively produced Orcagna, Donatello, and the celebrated Ghiberti, who fabricated those gates for the same church, which Michelagnolo pronounced worthy to form the entrance of Paradise. After Andrea, we may notice Giovanni Balducci, of Pisa, whose era, country, and style, all lead us to suppose him one of the same school. He was an excellent artist, and was employed by Castruccio, Lord of Lucca, and by Azzone Visconti, Prince of Milan; where he flourished, and left, among other monuments of his art, the tomb of San Pietro Martire, at S. Eustorgio, which is so highly praised by Torre, by Lattuada, and by various other learned illustrators of Milanese antiquities.[35] Two eminent artists, natives of Siena, proceeded from the school of Gio. Pisano, namely, the two brothers, Agnolo and Agostino, who are greatly commended by Vasari as improvers of the art. Whoever has seen the sepulchre of Guido, bishop of Arezzo, which is decorated with an infinity of statues and basso-relievos, representing passages of his life, will not only find reason to admire in them the design, which was the work of Giotto, but the execution of the sculpture. The brothers also executed many of their own designs in Orvieto, in Siena, and in Lombardy, where they brought up several pupils, who for a long period pursued their manner, and diffused it over Italy.
To the improvement of sculpture succeeded that of mosaic, through the efforts of another Tuscan, belonging to the order of minor friars, named Fra Jacopo, or Fra Mino da Turrita, from a place in the territory of Siena. It is not known whether he was instructed in his art by the Romans or by the Greek workers in mosaic,[36] but it is well ascertained that he very far surpassed them. On examining what remains of his works in Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, one can hardly be persuaded that it is the production of so rude an age, did not history constrain us to believe it. It appears probable that he took the ancients for his models, and deduced his rules from the more chaste specimens of mosaic, still remaining in several of the Roman churches, the design of which is less crude, the attitudes less forced, and the composition more skilful, than were exhibited by the Greeks who ornamented the church of San Marco, at Venice. Mino surpassed them in every thing. From 1225, when he executed, however feebly, the mosaic of the tribune of the church of San Giovanni, at Florence, he was considered at the head of the living artists in mosaic.[37] He merited this praise much more by his works at Rome, and it appears that he long maintained his reputation. Vasari has not been sufficiently just to the fame of Turrita, in noticing him only casually in the life of Tafi, but the verses he recites, and the commissions he mentions, demonstrate how greatly Turrita was esteemed by his contemporaries. It is maintained that he was also a painter, but this is a mistake which will be cleared up in the Sienese school, and both there and elsewhere I shall question the authority of any author who either greatly commends or underrates him.
From a deficiency of specimens, like those above recorded, painting long remained in a more rude state than mosaic, and was very far behind sculpture. But we must not imagine, that at the birth of Cimabue, in 1240, the race of artists was entirely extinct, as erroneously asserted by Vasari: this must be deemed an exaggeration, for he himself has recounted several sculptors, architects, and painters then living; and the general scope of his less cautious expressions, against which so many writers have inveighed, and still continue to declaim, favours this opinion. I shall be constrained to advert, in almost every book, to their accusations, and to produce the names of the artists who then lived. I shall commence with those who then flourished in Tuscany. The city of Pisa, at this time, had not only painters, but a school for each of the fine arts[38]. The distinguished Signor Morrona, who has illustrated the Pisan antiquities, deduces its origin immediately from Greece. The Pisans, already very powerful by sea and land, having resolved in 1063 to erect the vast fabric of their cathedral, had drawn thither artists in miniature, and other painters, at the same time with Buschetto the architect, and these men educated pupils for the city. The Greeks at that time were but ill qualified to instruct, for they knew little. Their first pupils in Pisa seem to have been a few anonymous artists, some of whose miniatures and rude paintings are still in existence. A parchment, containing the exultet, as usually sung on Sabbato Santo, is in the cathedral, and we may here and there observe, painted on it, figures in miniature, with plants and animals: it is a relique of the early part of the twelfth century, yet a specimen of art not altogether barbarous. There are likewise some other paintings of that century in the same cathedral, containing figures of our Lady, with the holy infant on her right arm: they are rude, but the progress of the same school may be traced from them to the time of Giunta. This artist lately received a fine eulogium, among other illustrious Pisans, from Signor Tempesta, and he was fully entitled to it from the more early historians. His country possesses none of his undoubted pictures, except a crucifixion with his name, which is believed to be among his earliest productions, a print from which may be found in the third volume of Pisa Illustrata. He executed better pictures in Assisi, where he was invited to paint by Frat' Elia di Cortona, superior of the Minori, about the year 1230. From thence we are furnished with notices of his education, which is thus described by P. Angeli, the Historian of that cathedral: "Juncta Pisanus ruditer à Græcis instructus, primus ex Italis, artem apprehendit circa An. Sal. 1210." In the church of the Angioli there is a better preserved work of the same master; it is a crucifixion, painted on a wooden cross; on the lateral edges and upper surface of which our Lady is represented, with two other half-length figures, and underneath the remains of an inscription are legible, which having copied on the spot, I do not hesitate to publish with its deficiencies now supplied:
ivnta pisanus ivntini me Fecit.
I supply Juntini, because Signor da Morrona asserts,[39] that about this time, a Giunta da Giuntino is mentioned in the records of Pisa, whom by the aid of the Assisi inscription, I conjecture to be the painter we have now under notice. The figures are considerably less than life; the design is dry, the fingers excessively long, but these are vitia non hominum sed temporum; in short, this piece shews a knowledge of the naked figure, an expression of pain in the heads, and a disposition of the drapery, greatly superior to the efforts of the Greeks, his contemporaries. The handling of his colours is strong, although the flesh inclines to that of bronze; the local tints are judiciously varied, the chiaroscuro even shews some art, and the whole is not inferior, except in the proportions, to crucifixions with similar half figures usually ascribed to Cimabue. He painted at Assisi another crucifixion,
