JOHN PISANO. - Sculptor, son of the sculptor Nicola di Pietro d'Apulia, b. at Pisa ca. 1284, d. between 1316 and 1318. A pupil and assistant of his father, he collaborated with him, with Arnolfo di Cambio and with others on the execution of the pulpit for the cathedral of Siena (1267-68) and then, again with Nicola, he is recorded in the inscription of the Fonte di Piazza at Perugia. After Nicola's death before March 1284, G. went to Siena where, between Oct. 1284 and Sept. 1285, he was granted citizenship and immunity from every burden, duty, levy, exaction, faction and military expedition.
He in fact, as is evident from a document of 1287, was working in the service of the Opera del Duomo, of which he was appointed master builder; in 1290 he was struck by a sentence for an undetermined crime, but in recognition of his merits, which made him irreplaceable in the works of the cathedral, his prison sentence was commuted to a monetary fine. In Aug. 1295 on behalf of the Commune of Siena he deliberated, together with Duccio di Buoninsegna and with other well-known masters, on the construction of a fountain at Pian d'Ovile; in Dec. of the same year he attended to the works at the Baths of Petriolo and in May 1296 he was requested by the Commune to provide the design for a new baptistery, which was not then built. In 1297, probably as a result of disagreements with the administration of the Duomo and of an inquiry, G. suddenly left Siena and returned to Pisa, where on 15 March 1298 he took measurements of the inclination of the cathedral bell tower. An inscription attests that the pulpit of the church of S. Andrea at Pistoia was completed by G. in 1301: and immediately afterwards, in 1302, G. began the pulpit for the cathedral of Pisa, whose execution dragged on until 1312. But already from 1310 G. had fixed his residence at Siena, where he had purchased in 1299 a house in Piazza del Duomo and a farm in the Bolciano area. In 1314 the sculptor was still living at Siena: the year of his death is not known precisely. He was buried at the foot of the cathedral of Siena.
On the basis of these documentary data, surely established, it is possible to reconstruct G.'s stylistic path, identifying his first efforts in his father's service in the pulpit of Siena, some parts of which, such as the panel with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Apocalyptic Christ, stand out for a pathetic impetuosity and for a harshness of execution which, albeit with some immaturity, already reveal G.'s independence with respect to the classical serenity of Nicola's conceptions. Again in close collaboration with his father G. executed between 1268 and 1276 and 1278 and 1284 some of the colossal marble busts of Prophets, Evangelists and of the Madonna with the Child on the exterior of the baptistery of Pisa, while in the Fonte of Perugia his contribution is more readily identifiable in the statuettes of the upper basin. It is, however, only after Nicola's death that G. gives the first great proof of his abilities as sculptor and architect, designing the facade of the cathedral of Siena (later completed in the second half of the 14th century not in accordance with G.'s project) and carving for it a series of statues (Philosophers of Antiquity, Prophets, Evangelists, the Sibyl, Mary of Moses) which constitute the first great cycle of monumental statuary in Italian art. Many of these statues were, during the last war, removed from the Duomo and placed in the Museo dell'Opera: in them the genius of G. reveals itself in all its greatness, not only for the very strong individuality with which each represented figure appears stamped, but also for the highly personal way in which the sculptor made his own the Gothic taste for the flowing and undulating line, and for the infinite variety of solutions that he was able to give to the theme of the figure in the round, dramatically animated and freed from every formal subjection to the architecture for which it is destined. In this respect, therefore, G.'s statuary art differs totally from that of the great northern sculptors of the cathedrals of France and Germany, and unmistakably and powerfully characterizes the Italian contribution to the formulation of the figurative civilization of the Gothic age. In the pulpit of Pistoia G. takes up the scheme of his father's pulpits, with the hexagonal body and plan surrounded by five relief panels interspersed with statuettes and sculptural groups which, by means of three-lobed arch connections with figures of Prophets and Evangelists in the spandrels and of Sibyls at the corners, rises on small columns resting alternately on lions: but the structure is more slender, the little arches are pointed, and above all different is the conception of the relief, realized with violent oppositions of shadow and light in the deep undercut backgrounds and in the sharp, synthetic profiles of the projections. With impetuous, dramatic vehemence G. interpreted the traditional themes of the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment, inventing very bold foreshortenings, breaking profiles, creating very strong dissonances of volumes: so that in each individual panel circulates an irrepressible impetus of movement which finds its most intense and acute expressions in the convulsed and turbulent scenes of the Massacre and the Judgment. The pulpit of the cathedral of Pisa is of circular form, with seven panels around it, plus two lateral ones at a balustrade, and instead of resting entirely on columns, it rests in part on statues and on grandiose groups of several figures in the round. There follows a greater decorative exuberance, a more markedly plastic character, while the surfaces of the reliefs, instead of being flat, are convex to allow a more animated and fanciful effect of the incidences of light; and it is this, henceforth, on a worn plastic material reduced to pure linear notations, that arouses by its flashes phantoms of figurations stamped with unheard-of energy, with a dramatic vividness that almost verges on expressionism. Among these masterpieces, fundamental stages in the very rapid evolution of Giovanni's plasticism, are placed a few other notable works, such as the two small wooden Crucifixes of the church of S. Andrea at Pistoia and of the Museo dell'Opera of Siena, the ivory Madonna of the cathedral of Pisa, the Madonna formerly in the Camposanto of Pisa and in which for the first time is announced the most gentle theme, dear to so much painting of the Trecento, of the mute exchange of glances between the Mother and the Divine Son, the Madonna with the two little angels holding candelabra in the Scrovegni chapel at Padua, the one formerly on the lunette of the main portal of the baptistery of Pisa, the one of the cathedral of Prato, which is the last of the series; and finally the admirable remains of the tomb of Margaret, wife of the emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg (ca. 1312), which are preserved in the Museo civico of Genoa. Even in these lesser undertakings G.'s individualistic and intensely passionate temperament reveals itself with a coherence of language and an unconstrained freedom of formal solutions that make him not only the greatest, but also the most boldly revolutionary and the most modern sculptor of the entire Gothic period. - See pl. XLVI.
Bibliography5 works
Enzo Carli