"I did not mark
Through all the gloomy circles of the abyss,
Spirit that swelled so proudly 'gainst his God."[142]
It is in Pistoja better almost than anywhere else in Italy that these
early sculptors--men who were at work here before Niccolò Pisano came
from Apulia--may be studied. Rude enough as we may think, they are yet
in their subtle beauty, if we will but look at them, the marvellous
product of a time which many have thought altogether barbarous.
Consider, then, the reliefs over the door of S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas, or
the sculptures on the fagade of S. Bartolommeo in Pantano, the work of
Rodolfinus and Guido Bigarelli of Como: they are all works of the
twelfth century, and it is, as I think, no naïve beginning we see, but
the last hours of an art that is already thousands of years old, about
to be born again in the work of Pisano. And indeed we may trace very
happily the rise of Tuscan sculpture in Pistoja. Though she possesses no
work of Niccolò himself, his influence is supreme in the pulpit of S.
Giovanni Fuorcivitas, and it is the beautiful work of his son Giovanni
we see in the great pulpit of S. Andrea, where you enter by a door
carved in 1166 by Gruamonte with the Adoration of the Magi. Unlike the
work of Fra Guglielmo in S. Giovanni, the pulpit of S. Andrea is
hexagonal, and there Giovanni has carved in high relief the Birth of Our
Lord, the Adoration of the Magi, the Murder of the Innocents, the
Crucifixion, and the Last Judgment. They were carved in 1301, before
Giovanni began the Pisan pulpit now in the Museo in that city. And if we
see here the first impulse of the Gothic, the Romantic spirit, in
Italian art, as in Niccolò's work we have seen the classic inspiration,
it is the far result of these panels that we may discover in the
terra-cotta frieze on the vestibule of the Ospedale del Ceppo. That is a
work of the sixteenth century, and thus the fifteenth-century work, ever
present with us in Florence, is missing here. It is not, however, to any
member of the della Robbia clan that we owe this beautiful work, I
think, but to some unknown sculptor with whom Buglioni may have worked.
For the seven reliefs representing works of Charity and divided by
figures of the Virtues are of a surprising splendour, a really classic
beauty, and Burckhardt wishes to compare them with the frescoes of
Andrea del Sarto and his companions rather than with the sculpture of
that time.
One wanders about this quiet, alluring city, where the sculptures are
scattered like flowers on every church porch and municipal building,
without the weariness of the sightseer. One day you go by chance to S.
Francesco al Prato, a beautiful and spacious church in a wilderness of
Piazza, built in 1294. And there suddenly you come upon the little
flowers of St. Francis, faded and fallen--here a brown rose, there a
withered petal; here a lily broken short, there a nosegay drooped and
dead: and you realise that here you are face to face with something real
which has passed away, and so it is with joy you hurry out into the
sun, which will always shine with splendour and life, the one thing
perhaps that, if these dead might rise from their tombs in S. Francesco,
they would recognise as a friend, the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever.
Other churches too there are in Pistoja: S. Piero Maggiore, where, as in
Florence, so here, the Bishop, coming to the city, was wedded in a
lovely symbol to the Benedictine Abbess--there too are the works of
Maestro Bono the sculptor; S. Salvadore, which stands in the place
where, as it is said, they buried Cataline; S. Domenico, where you may
find the beautiful tombs of Andrea Franchi and of Filippo Lazzeri the
humanist--this made by Rossellino in 1494. Pistoja is a city of
churches; one wanders into them and out again always with new delight;
and indeed, they lend a sort of gravity to a place that is light-hearted
and alluring beyond almost any other in this part of Tuscany certainly.
Thinking thus of her present sweetness, one is glad to find that one
poet at least has thought Dante too hard with men. It is strange that it
should be Cino who sings--
"This book of Dante's, very sooth to say,
Is just a poet's lovely heresy,
Which by a lure as sweet as sweet can be
Draws other men's concerns beneath its sway;
While, among stars' and comets' dazzling play,
It beats the right down, let's the wrong go free,
Shows some abased, and others in great glee,
Much as with lovers is Love's ancient way.
Therefore his vain decrees, wherein he lied,
Fixing folks' nearness to the Fiend their foe,
Must be like empty nutshells flung aside.
Yet through the vast false witness set to grow,
French and Italian vengeance on such pride
May fall, like Antony's on Cicero."[143]