GIOVANNI DI BALDUCCIO (BALDUCCI, GIOVANNI DA PISA). — Sculptor, born in Pisa toward the end of the 13th century. There is documentary evidence concerning him up to 1349. In Pisa, between 1317 and 1318, he worked in the Cathedral under the guidance of Giovanni Pisano, Tino di Camaino, and Lupo di Francesco.
Some time later he made the pulpit now in the Oratory of the Misericordia at S. Casciano near Florence, and in 1328 the tomb for the son of Castruccio Castracane in S. Francesco at Sarzana. Then, in 1339, the master was in Milan, where he sculpted the ark of S. Pietro Martire in S. Eustorgio, drawing not only on his Tuscan experience but also on his knowledge of the works of the masters of Campione. Shortly afterward he must have been in Cremona, where he was assigned three statues in the loggia above the entrance to the Cathedral. Returning to Milan in 1347, he signed the door of S. Maria di Brera, now fragmentary, in that city’s Archaeological Museum. In 1349 he was summoned back to his native city to assume direction of the works of the Opera del Duomo, but there is no evidence that he accepted the invitation. After introducing the forms of the new Tuscan sculpture to Lombardy and exercising considerable influence in that artistic milieu, G. di B. in turn showed that he understood certain inner values of the sculpture of the masters of Campione; thus, both in the tomb of S. Pietro Martire and in the three statues of Cremona, improvised refinements of form and feeling are evident in comparison with his earlier works. These demonstrate how G. was able to make fruitful use of the new experience he had acquired in Lombardy, grafting it onto his earlier Tuscan culture.