Nicola & Giovanni Pisano Pulpits

In the year 1260 Nicola Pisano, the sculptor who initiated the revival of classicizing ideals that would later form a major component of Italian Renaissance art, created a remarkable and unusual monument for the Baptistry of Pisa, a hexagonal pulpit supported by seven colorful columns and displaying on its parapet five visually compelling narrative reliefs; several years later he designed a second pulpit, this time for the cathedral of Siena. Toward the end of the century, his son Giovanni received a pulpit commission for the parish church of Sant'Andrea, Pistoia, to be followed a few years later (c. 1302) by another one for the cathedral of Pisa. These four extraordinary monuments, each building upon both older traditions and its own immediate predecessors, yet each a highly innovative and original solution, are the primary subject of this book.