HKB
Andrea Pisano, Sculptor and Architect.
While the art of painting has flourished, sculptors have never been lacking who could produce excellent work. To the attentive mind, the works of every age bear testimony to this fact, for the two arts are really sisters, born at the same time and nourished and animated by the same spirit. This is seen in Andrea Pisano, who practised sculpture in the time of Giotto, and made so much improvement in that art, both by practice and study, that he was considered the best exponent of the profession who had until then appeared in Tuscany, especially in casting bronze. For this reason his works were so honoured and prized by those who knew him, and especially by the Florentines, that he was able without a pang to change his country, relations, property, and friends. It was a great advantage to him that the masters who had preceded him in sculpture had experienced so much difficulty in the art that their works were rough and common, so that those who saw his productions, judged him a miracle by comparison. That these first works were rude may be credited, as has been said elsewhere, upon an examination of some which are over the principal door of S. Paolo at Florence, and some stone ones in the church of Ognissanti, which are so executed as to move to laughter those who regard them, rather than to excite in them any admiration or pleasure. It is certain that it was much more easy to recover the art of sculpture when the statues had been lost, as a man is a round figure by nature, and is so represented by that art, whereas in painting, on the other hand, it is not so easy to find the right shapes and the best manner of portraying them, which are essential to the majesty, beauty, grace, and ornament of a picture. In one circumstance fortune was favourable to Andrea, because, as has been said elsewhere, by means of the numerous victories won by the Pisans at sea, many antiquities and sarcophagi were brought to Pisa, which are still about the Duomo and Campo Santo. These gave him great assistance and much light, advantages which could not be enjoyed by Giotto, because the ancient paintings which have been preserved are not so numerous as the sculptures. And although statues have frequently been destroyed by fire, devastation, and the fury of war, or buried or transported to various places, yet it is easy for a connoisseur to recognise the productions of all the different countries by their various styles. For example, the Egyptian is slender, with long figures; the Greek is artificial, and much care is displayed on the nude, while the heads nearly always have the same turn; and the ancient Tuscan is careful in the treatment of hair and somewhat rude. As regards the Romans, and I call Roman for the most part those things which were brought to Rome after Greece was subjugated, as all that was good and beautiful in the world was carried thither; this Roman work, I say, is so beautiful in expression, attitudes, movements both in nude figures and in draperies, that the Romans may be said to have extracted the beautiful from all the other provinces and gathered it into a single style, making it the best and the most divine of all the arts.