Bonanno Pisano

BONANNO PISANO. - Sculptor and architect of the second half of the 12th century. The bronze leaves of the main door of the cathedral of Monreale bear his name in the following inscription: «Anno DNI MCLXXXVI Idictioe III Bonannus Civis Pisanus me fecit». He also cast in bronze the main door of the cathedral of Pisa, as is gathered from the inscription reported by Vasari and Tronci: «Anno MCLXXX, ego Bonannus Pisanus mea arte hanc portam uno anno perfect 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 «porta di s. Ranieri») preserves two bronze leaves which, although unsigned, are certainly the work of B., perhaps later than 1186 rather than of 1180 as is commonly believed.

Vasari calls him the author, together with a certain Guglielmo the German, of the campanile of Pisa, which began to be built in 1174: and indeed in 1838 a sarcophagus was found at the foot of the campanile with a mutilated epigraph bearing the artist's name. With less foundation tradition attributes to B. the erection of the third circuit of the walls of Pisa, begun in 1155 under the consulate of Cocco Giffi. The bronze leaves of Monreale are divided into forty-two compartments with scenes from the Old Testament in relief: those of Pisa present, likewise in relief, various Stories of the New Testament plus, in four panels of double width, above Christ and the Virgin in majesty among angels and below twelve Prophets beneath palm trees. The iconography of the stories is predominantly Byzantine, with strong classicizing accents that B. probably derives from Guglielmo, the sculptor of the ancient pulpit of the cathedral of Pisa (1159-62), now in the cathedral of Cagliari, while, in the modelling and in the very technique of casting, B. shows that he knows the contemporary Rhenish bronzes. Nevertheless, despite the complexity of his culture, B. is an artist of rare immediacy and fervid imagination, rich in narrative and dramatic touches in his sober and admirably balanced compositions: he is certainly the greatest Pisan sculptor before Nicola. The campanile too, begun by him, but continued by Giovanni di Simone and finished in the 14th century, reveals his exceptional architectural qualities in the original assimilation and elaboration of the style of Buschetto and Rainaldo.

(fot. dimori)
BONANNO PISANO - Detail of the bronze door - Pisa, cathedral.

Enzo Carli