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Chap. IV. NICCOLA PISANO 125 in the crucifixion, the body of the martyred Redeemer re minds one of nothing more than of a suffering Hercules. In the Last Judgment, which is the finest of the series, Niccola’s vigour and energy found play. In the upper centre the Saviour sat enthroned in a fine attitude, beneath him the elect, the damned, resurrection and Lucifer. It would be difficult to find a better imitation of the classic nude in various attitudes than is here to be noticed, especially in females. Strange are the figures of the de vils and of Satan; the latter with a grotesque head and ears, the body and claws of a vulture united to legs re sembling those of an ox. Equally so is the figure of a devil with the body of an infant and a head as large as the torso, revealing the features of one of those hideous masks peculiar to antiquity. This curiously conceived devil seems to swallow one of the arms of a sufferer convulsed with agony, as he lies trodden down by the claws of Satan. The same study of the classic was be trayed in all the isolated figures, such as those at the angles below the cornice of the pulpit. In the symbolical figure of Fortitude, the movement and attitude and the short stout form recalled the antique, an antique of a coarse and fleshy character, but conventional and mo tionless. 1 Kiccola thus suddenly appears in Pisa in the year 1260 as one who rejecting the conventional religious senti ment which had marked his predecessors and cotempo raries, revived the imitation of the classic Roman period, and remained a mere spectator at first of the struggle for the new and Christian types of the early school of Florence. Grand in comparison with Guido and his pre decessors, whose religious sentiment was allied to the ru dest and most primitive execution, he gave new life to 1 “This pulpit suffered a few jRoncioni. Istorie Pisane, of the years ago a serious and meraora- 16 lh century published by h' r a n - hie damage, the heads of many cesco Bonaini in Archiv. figures having been broken off by St or i co. FI or. 1844. Vol. VI, Lorenzino dei Medici ....to em- Ip. 284. bellish and adorn his study.” I
