München: Max Seidel, Father and Son: Nicola and Giovanni Pisano - this is not just an art monograph but a panorama of culture of Tuscan cities during duecento and trecento

The two tome publication Father and Son: Nicola and Giovanni Pisano in not a "conventional" monograph on activities of both artists , genies of Italian art, but it is a complex of detail studies covering the social setting, iconography, esthetics, art influences, and also a dialogue of creative activities of father and son. This is a giant addition to the book of studies published by Seidel in 2005 as "Italian Art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance".

To the particular themes offers the author an extensive sum of facts regarding style, iconography and history. Really splendid is the photographic supplement (full one tome) which gives a visually perfect illustration to all theoretic reflections of the author. Seidel's interest is concentrated mainly on the pulpits of Nicola Pisano in Pisa and Siena.

Published here is the full complex of the documents covering Giovanni Pisano's activities in the cathedral in Pisa as the master mason (pp.105-117). Analysis of the documents results e.g. in Seidel's new dating of the famous pulpit in the church of Sant' Andrea in Pistoia.

According to the first biographer of Giovanni Pisano, Giorgio Vasari, creation of the pulpit took the author four years, but Pisano didn't have such a lot of time at all! On December 14, 1297 he signed a long-term contract with operarius of the Pisa cathedral on the base of which he became a regular employee of the Pisa organization called Opera del Duomo.

Using the existing accounts, Seidel maps out the artist's work load in detail. Since May, 1299 till December, 1299 Pisano had been continually engaged at the Square of Miracles in Pisa. According to the pay-sheets, he could not work elsewhere than in Pisa. A radical change came only in 1300. Pisano can be found on the pay-sheets just for three weeks in September, and later he re-appears only on December 9, 1301.

He had not been at the Pisa construction site for nearly 2 years. Only since January 5, 1302 he had been regularly mentioned in the documents on Pisa mason works as its head, "caput magistrorum", till spring 1308 when the pay-sheets were abruptly ended. New official records started in January, 1315. So, according to Seidel's analysis, Pisano started his work in Pistoia in December, 1299 and finished it in November, 1301.

This is a small example of Seidel's thorough method of work - no speculations, just facts.

A great deal of Seidel's work is dedicated to the Pisanos as the authors of a new iconography. He analyses particular motives at the pulpits from Pisa, Pistoia, and Siena: the allegory of the Justice (pp.122-132), of the King Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents, with the reference to the actual reception of the child crusade (pp.132-163), the allegory of the Liberal Arts (pp.175-211), of prophets and Sibyllas (pp.213-234), of animals, that is the complete Pisanian bestiary (pp.236-262).

There is an interesting theme of the Arbor Ecclesiae (pp.264-271). According to Max Seidel's interpretation, the so called Mystic Christ at Pisanos' pulpits represents the Arbor Ecclesiae, that is the birth of the Church from Christ's side. This motif appeared already at the Siena pulpit of Nicola Pisano, and then at all the other pulpits by Pisanos.

Seidel pays a close attention to the political interpretation of the Hercul (pp.273-303), regarding Pisanos' pulpits in Pisa. In the 13th - 14th century Italy it represented a significant political symbol. Medieval chronicler Benzo do Alessandria claimed that during the coronation of Henry VII of Luxemburg (grandfather of Karel IV.) King of Lombardy on January 6, 1311, which event took place in Sant' Ambrogio church in Milan, a marble statue of Hercul holding a crowbar in one hand and a dead lion by tail in the other hand stood by the main altar together with the portraits of the sovereign and his wife Margaret of Brabant. Future Emperor should have been "a new Hercul".

The pro-emperor Ghibelline party in the 13th century Florence had a motif of Hercul killing a lion on its seal - perhaps because the symbol of the pro-papal Guelf party was a lion. But there was also the Hercul of Pisa, an antique marble sculpture of above-life size dimensions standing by the medieval gate called  Porta Aurea through which victorious Pisanian armies returned to the city.

On the base of this, Max Seidel deduces that at the time when Nicola sculpted his Hercul for the Pisa baptisterium pulpit, majority of spectators were willing to connect it with the statue by Porta Aurea gate, an emblem of the victorious Pisa.

The book is full of such historical and cultural references allowing genuine understanding of the art of the both Pisanos, as it is not just an art monograph but a complete panorama of culture of Tuscan cities during duecento and trecento.

Peter Kováč

Max Seidel, Father and Son: Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Hirmer München 2012.

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