Giovanni, a son of Niccola Pisano, worked between 1270 and 1330 a.d. Giovanni Pisano, like his father, was a brilliant architect. As a sculptor, however, he lacked Niccola’s sense of beauty, and he clung too closely to the fantastic exaggerations of the Gothic artists. He abandoned the ideal of tranquillity and self-restraint which his father had learnt from the Hellenic example. But his technical skill was so great and his efforts to give a passionate realization of the scriptural scenes were so sincere that Giovanni’s best work shows a force lacking in the sculptures of Niccola Pisano.
On the whole, the works of Giovanni prove that the influence of Niccola was not very potent. This seems to be due to the fact that to the time of his death the taste for sculpture was not general. It was rather eclectic. It appealed to few beyond the ranks of the aristocrats.
Moreover, though Niccola had realized that “art must anchor in nature, or be the sport of every breath of folly,” the conviction was not general. The feeling for the beauties of the natural world was only growing slowly. It came to the flood early in the thirteenth century, and found its most intense expression in the sermons of Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). It is idle to inquire whether the “First of the Friars” taught the world to look once more for the beauties of nature beneath the hard crudities of external phenomena. Certain it is that he was one
“Who heard the tale The low wind tells, Who read the rune Of moorland wells.”
NICCOLA PISANO
THE PULPIT AT PISA
Saint Francis never reached the modern conception of nature as the embodiment of the divine spirit such as is found in the poems of Wordsworth. It could not be said of him
“None inlier taught how near to earth is heaven, With what vast concords Nature’s harp is strung.”
But his passion for the beauties of nature added a new note to the prevalent interpretation of Scripture. Consciously or unconsciously, it led him to a far more human conception of the Godhead.