Niccolò dell'Arca

NICCOLÒ dell'ARCA. - Also called N. da Bari or N. d'Apulia from his birthplace. Italian sculptor b. around 1435 and d. in Bologna in 1494.

From 1469 to 1473 he worked on the Ark of St. Dominic (from which he took his nickname), adding to the pre-existing portion by N. Pisano and his pupils the capping with the Evangelists, the Eternal Father, the Christ in the sarcophagus between two angels and five saints. In this much-celebrated work N. revives, in a fantastic world, expressions of Franco-Flemish art combined with effects of exquisitely Tuscan grace. Perhaps of 1474 is the terracotta bust depicting St. Dominic, in the same Bolognese church, in which it is easy to note a minutely descriptive character that finds correspondence in certain more naturalistic details of the Ark, while the colossal Madonna di Piazza, of the Palazzo comunale of Bologna, dated 1478, testifies to a new stylistic moment of N. with reflections of the art of Verrocchio. He executed, again in Bologna, with ample and balanced grandeur, the terracotta eagle for the portal of S. Giovanni in Monte, datable to shortly before 1481, the year of the completion of the facade itself. A masterpiece of N. is the terracotta group depicting the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, in the Bolognese church of S. Maria della Vita, which shows the influences of Ferrarese art that flourished in Bologna with Cossa and with Roberti in the last thirty years of the century. This influence is above all evident in the dramatic figures of the Marys and of St. John, who posture revealing the most intense emotion while their garments are impetuously agitated by a whirlwind of storm. - See pl. CXV.

Mario Massaccesi