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 may be inferred from the inscription recorded 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 «door of s. Ranieri») preserves two bronze leaves which, although unsigned, are certainly the work of B., perhaps later than 1186 rather than dating from 1180, as is commonly believed.
Vasari declares him the author, together with a German Guglielmo, of the bell tower of Pisa, whose construction began
in 1174; and indeed, in 1838, a sarcophagus was discovered at the foot of the bell tower with a mutilated epigraph bearing the artist’s name. With less foundation, tradition attributes to B. the construction of the third circuit of the walls of Pisa, begun in 1155 under the consulship of Cocco Giffi. The bronze leaves of Monreale are divided into forty-two compartments with relief scenes from the Old Testament; those of Pisa present, likewise in relief, Stories from the New Testament, along with, in four panels of double width, Christ and the Virgin enthroned among angels above, and twelve Prophets beneath palm trees below. The iconography of the stories is predominantly Byzantine, with robust classicizing accents that B. probably derived from Guglielmo, the sculptor of the former 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. demonstrates his knowledge of contemporary Rhenish bronzes. Nevertheless, despite the complexity of his culture, B. is an artist of rare immediacy and fervent imagination, rich in narrative and dramatic motifs in his sober and admirably balanced compositions: he is certainly the greatest Pisan sculptor before Nicola. The bell tower, too, begun by him but continued by Giovanni di Simone and completed in the 14th century, reveals his exceptional architectural qualities in the original assimilation and elaboration of the styles of Buschetto and Rainaldo.
(fot. dimori)
BONANNO PISANO — Detail of the bronze door — Pisa, cathedral.