Val dArno | Page 5

If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She
is the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.
21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,

primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,--what the spirits of
Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was
himself. Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was
gentleman or clown--rich or poor--soldier or sailor. Was he never, then,
in those fleets that brought the marbles back from the ravaged Isles of
Greece? was he at first only a labourer's boy among the scaffoldings of
the Pisan apse,--his apron loaded with dust--and no man praising him
for his speech? Rough he was, assuredly; probably poor; fierce and
energetic, beyond even the strain of Pisa,--just and kind, beyond the
custom of his age, knowing the Judgment and Love of God: and a
workman, with all his soul and strength, all his days.
22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that you
should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be renowned,
as such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had even more
influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.
For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a
change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a
necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at
the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally
will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings
a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel
roof, as if the building were all one sonorous marble bell.
Which indeed it is; and travellers are always greatly amused at being
allowed to ring this bell; but it never occurs to them to ask how it came
to be ringable:--how that tintinnabulate roof differs from the dome of
the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines into the
whispering gallery of St. Paul's.
23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you
are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which, if
you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be
decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus,
and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves
carried on the backs of as many animals.
All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola's time, and
executed again and again. But behold! between the capitals of the
pillars and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped arches,

the hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils. You
have seen such cusped arches before, you think?
Yes, gentlemen, you have; but the Pisans had not. And that
intermediate layer of the pulpit means--the change, in a word, for all
Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the
rise of her Gothic dynasty; it means the duomo of Milan instead of the
temple of Paestum.
24. I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your
eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan
is of entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and
fret is in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will therefore
serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of Niccola Pisano
signifies.
In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of it,
instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings of
severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no fantasies,
no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each of one
polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them; your
panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity. The
whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the foundation of us,
(which Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin); Eagle to carry your
Gospel message--Dove you think it ought to be?
[Illustration: PLATE II.--NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT.]
Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but
behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's
opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like,
and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow a