NICOLA PISANO. – Sculptor, son of Pietro, born probably in Apulia around 1220, died between 1278 and 1284; in the documents he is called Nicolae de Pisis, Nichole de Pisis, Nichola Petri de Apulia, Nicola de Apulia and Magister Nichola Pisanus filius quondam Petri.
In 1260 he completed and signed the pulpit of the baptistery of Pisa; between 1264 and 1265 he was perhaps in Bologna, and then, between 1265 and 1269, he was in Siena in the company of numerous collaborators, among them his son Giovanni and Arnolfo di Cambio, engaged in work on the pulpit of that Cathedral; between 1272 and 1273 he was in Pistoia to remake the altar in the chapel of the Apostle in the church of S. Jacopo; around 1278 he was in Perugia working on the fountain with his son Giovanni, who signed the upper basin with his name alone. Of these documented works, only the altar in Pistoia has been destroyed, while the Sienese pulpit was altered during the 16th century, when it was given a new staircase. It may also be supposed that, for the Arca di S. Domenico in the church of the Santo in Bologna, N. provided a drawing or design
Among the other works variously attributed to N. are the two reliefs with the Deposizione and the Adorazione dei Magi in the lunette and on the architrave of the left-hand door of Lucca Cathedral; some heads and busts belonging to the sculptural decoration on the exterior of the baptistery of Pisa; and the holy-water basin of S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, perhaps the work of Giovanni. Following Vasari, N. is credited with an architectural activity of which the church of S. Trinita in Florence would be the principal testimony. A native of Puglia, N., who arrived in Tuscany while still young around the middle of the 13th century, seems to have revitalized the somewhat archaeological classicism characteristic of Puglian Romanesque sculpture through contact with the livelier accents of the distant or atavistic Etruscan tradition characteristic of Tuscan Romanesque sculpture. Nevertheless, from his earliest work, the Pisan pulpit, he demonstrates a knowledge of the achievements of Gothic culture, which become more pronounced in the Sienese pulpit, without this signifying any progress on his part along the path of art; rather, such progress seems to appear in the reliefs of the fountain at Perugia, where there emerges almost a rethinking of the tradition whose language N. summarizes in order to shape, bend, and adapt it to new requirements. - Vedi tav. CXVIII.