PIZZOLO, NICCOLÒ. — Painter and sculptor, born around 1420, died in Padua in 1453. Unlike so many other contemporary Paduan artists, he did not attend Squarcione’s workshop, but trained through contact and collaboration with the great Florentines working in Padua in the first half of the fifteenth century: Filippo Lippi, whom he assisted together with Ansuino da Forlì in the frescoes of the Podestà’s chapel, and Donatello, whom he assisted in the work on the altar of the Santo, in 1446–48.
Dating from 1448 is the agreement by which P. and Mantegna undertook to execute half of the decoration of the Ovetari chapel at the Eremitani in Padua. His sudden death, which occurred in a brawl, interrupted P.’s work, which was limited to the execution of the figure of the Eternal in the apse and the tondi with the Fathers of the Church; but the great stylistic affinity between him and Mantegna, ten years his junior, meant that only documents that have come to light recently made it possible to establish precisely the portion belonging to each of the two partners, returning to Mantegna several frescoes (Saints in the apse, and Stories of s. Giacomo) previously believed to be by P., who in fact is the only artist whom one may speak of as a predecessor and master of the great Mantuan.
The masterpiece of the sculptor P. is the terracotta altarpiece, completed between 1448 and ’53 for the same Ovetari chapel, once erroneously believed to be by Giovanni di Pisa, and in which the master’s derivation from Donatello is evident; here he establishes himself as the true progenitor of fifteenth-century Paduan sculpture. Also attributable to him is a Madonna and Child in the antechamber of the sacristy of the Eremitani.