PIZZOLO, NICCOLÒ. - Painter and sculptor, b. ca. 1420, d. in Padua in 1453. Unlike many other contemporary Paduan artists, he did not frequent Squarcione's workshop but trained through contact and collaboration with the great Florentines working in Padua in the first half of the 15th century: Filippo Lippi, whom he assisted together with Ansuino da Forlì in the frescoes of the chapel of the Podestà, and Donatello, whom he assisted in the work on the altar of the Santo, in 1446-48.
From 1448 dates 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 roundels with the Fathers of the Church; but the great affinity of style between him and Mantegna, ten years his junior, meant that only documents recently brought to light have made it possible to establish with precision the part belonging to each of the two partners, restoring to Mantegna some frescoes (Saints in the apse, and Stories of St. James) previously believed to be by P., who in fact is the only artist of whom one can speak as a predecessor and master of the great Mantuan.
The masterpiece of P. as a sculptor 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 Donatellian derivation is evident, who here asserts himself as the true progenitor of Paduan sculpture of the 15th century. A Madonna and Child in the anti-sacristy of the Eremitani is also to be attributed to him.
Bibliography5 works
Nolfo Di Carpegna