BONANNO PISANO. — Sculptor and architect of the second half of the 12th century. The bronze doors of the main entrance of the cathedral of Monreale bear his name in the following inscription: «Anno DNI MCLXXXVI Idictore III Bonannus Civis Pisanus me fecit». He also cast the main door of the cathedral of Pisa, as is evident from the inscription reported by Vasari and Tronci: «Anno MCLXXX, ego Bonannus Pisanus me arte hanc portam uno anno perfeci tempore Benedicti Operarii». The door was destroyed in the fire of 1596, but one of the side entrances of the Pisan cathedral (the so-called “door of St. Ranieri”) preserves two bronze doors which, although unsigned, are certainly the work of B., perhaps dating from after 1186 rather than from 1180 as is commonly believed.
Vasari states that he was the author, together with a certain Guglielmo Tedesco, of the bell tower of Pisa, which began to be built in 1174: and indeed in 1838 a sarcophagus with a mutilated inscription bearing the name of the artist was found at the foot of the bell tower. With less foundation, tradition attributes to B. the construction of the third circle of the walls of Pisa, begun in 1155 under the consulate of Cocco Griffi. The bronze doors of Monreale are divided into forty-two panels with scenes from the Old Testament in relief: those of Pisa present, also in relief, twenty stories from the New Testament, plus, in four panels of double width, above Christ and the Virgin in majesty between angels and below twelve Prophets under palm trees. The iconography of the stories is predominantly Byzantine, with strong classical accents that B. probably derived from Guglielmo, the sculptor of the ancient pulpit of the cathedral of Pisa (1159–62), now in the cathedral of Cagliari, while, in the model of the casting technique itself, B. shows that he was familiar with contemporary Rhenish bronzes. However, despite the complexity of his culture, B. is an artist of rare immediacy and vivid imagination, rich in narrative and dramatic touches in his sober and admirably balanced compositions: he is certainly the greatest Pisan sculptor before Nicola. Even the bell tower, which he began but which was continued by Giovanni di Simone and completed in the 14th century, reveals his exceptional architectural qualities in the original assimilation and elaboration of the style of Buschetto and Raimondo.
