PIZZOLO, Niccolò. — Painter and sculptor, born c. 1420, died in Padua in 1453. Unlike many of his Paduan contemporaries, he did not attend Squarcione’s workshop but instead 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 alongside Ansuino da Forlì in the frescoes of the Podestà Chapel, and Donatello, whom he aided in the works of the High Altar of the Santo between 1446 and 1448.
A document from 1448 records the agreement by which Pizzolo and Mantegna undertook to execute half of the decoration of the Ovetari Chapel in the Eremitani in Padua. The artist’s sudden death, which occurred in a brawl, interrupted his work, and he completed only the figure of the Eternal in the apse and the roundels with the Fathers of the Church. However, the strong stylistic affinity between him and Mantegna, who was ten years his junior, has meant that only recently discovered documents have made it possible to determine precisely the share of the work belonging to each partner, restoring to Mantegna certain frescoes (Saints in the apse and Stories of St. James) previously attributed to Pizzolo. In fact, Pizzolo is the only artist who can be considered a predecessor and master of the great Mantuan master.
The sculptor’s masterpiece is the terracotta altarpiece, completed between 1448 and 1453 for the same Ovetari Chapel, long mistakenly attributed to Giovanni di Pisa. In it, the Donatellesque derivation of the master is evident, and here he emerges as the true founder of 15th-century Paduan sculpture. To him is also attributed a Madonna and Child in the sacristy antechamber of the Eremitani.