Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/594

Rh 568 SCULPTURE [iTALIAX. alone in its best days could have rivalled. The similarity between the plastic arts of Athens in the 5th or 4th cen- tury B.C. and of Florence in the 15th century is not one of analogy only. Though free from any touch of copyism, there are many points in the works of such men as Dona- tello, Luca della Kobbia, and Vittore Pisanello which strongly recall the sculpture of ancient Greece, and suggest that, if a sculptor of the later Phidian school had been surrounded by the same types of face and costume as those among which the Italians lived, he would have produced plastic works closely resembling those of the great Floren- tine masters. In the 14th century, in northern Italy, various schools of sculpture existed, especially at Verona and Venice, whose art differed widely from the contem- porary art of Tuscany ; but Milan and Pavia, on the other hand, possessed sculptors who followed closely the style of the Pisani. The chief examples of the latter class are the magnificent shrine of St Augustine in the cathedral of Pavia, dated 1362, and the somewhat similar shrine of Peter the Martyr (1339), by Balduccio of Pisa, in the church of St Eustorgio at Milan, both of white marble, decorated in the most lavish way with statuettes and subject reliefs. Many other fine pieces of the Pisan school exist in Milan. The well-known tombs of the Scaliger family at Verona show a more native style of design, and in general form, though not in detail, suggest the influence of transalpine Gothic. In Venice the northern and almost French character of much of the early 15th- century sculpture is more strongly marked, especi- ally in the noble figures in high relief which de- corate the lower story and angles of thedoge's palace; 1 tnese are mostly the work of a Venetian named Bar- tolomeo Bon. A magni- ficent marble tympanum relief by Bon has recently been added to the South Kensington Museum; it has a noble colossal figure of the Madonna, who shel- ters under her mantle a number of kneeling wor- shippers ; the background is enriched with foliage and heads, forming a " Jesse tree," designed with greatdecorative skill. The cathedral of Como, built at the very end of the 15th century, is de- corated with good sculp- ture of almost Gothic style, but on the whole rather dull and mechanical in de- tail,like much of the sculp- ture in the extreme north of Italy. A large quantity of rich sculpture was pro- F I- 16. Florentine marble effigy in duced in Naples during low relief in the church of the the 14th century, but of Certos a near Florence, no great merit either in design or in execution. The lofty monument of King Robert (1350), behind the high altar of S. Chiara, and other tombs in the same church 1 See Buskin, Stones of Venice ; and Mothes, Gesch. der Bank u Bildh. Venedigs, Leipsic, 1859. are the most conspicuous works of th, period. Very beautiful sepulchral effigies in low relief Tare produced in many parts of Italy, especially at Florem. The tornb of Lorenzo Acciaioli (see fig. 16), in the Cert<a near Florence is a fine example of about the year 1400, which has absurdly been attributed to Donatello. Rome was very remarkable during the 14th century for its extraordinary poverty in the production of sculpture. The clumsy effigies at the north-east of S. Maria in Trastevere are striking ex- amples of the degradation of the plastic art there about the year 1400; and it was not till nearly the middle of the century that the arrival of able Florentine sculptors, such as Filarete, Mino da Fiesole, and the Pollaiuoli, initiated a brilliant era of artistic activity, which, how- ever, for about a century continued to depend on the presence of sculptors from Tuscany and other northern provinces. It was not, in fact, till the period of full decad- ence had begun that Rome itself produced any notable artists. For the great sculptors of Florence during the 14th and 15th centuries we refer the reader to the separate bio- graphical notices on the sub- FIG. 17. Siue of St George by ject. The Pisani and Arnolfo Donatellcvutside the church of del Cambio were succeeded 0rSaQM by Orcagna and others, who carried ouind developed the Fifteen! century, /IM /rallll FIG. 18. Bronze colossal statue of Colleoni. Venice, modelled by Verrocchio and cast by Leoj great lessons these pioneers of th< Renaissance had taught. Ghiberti, the sculptor of tl world-famed bap-