an apparently extinct art, and had in common with the men of his time at Pisa nothing but the subject. Pagan form subservient to Christian ideas, such was the cha racter of Niccola’s sculpture. To nature he owed little — to the Roman antique much, and hence occasional stiff ness and coldness. In general expression, the idea of ten derness was sacrificed to that of masculine force and mus cular fleshiness of knit. In form, the stout square her culean type of the Roman decline, somewhat conventionally generalized, was that which he preferred. Even his fancy and occasional vehemence in the delineation of suffering and pain, were imitated from the antique more than from nature, and the heads of his devils or of Lucifer were but the grotesque masks of antiquity. In composition, the equilibrium of the masses was seldom attended to or con sidered. In execution, the figures were detached and mo delled like those of ancient Rome; the marble was highly polished and worked with technical skill, but less in obedience to inspiration than to rule. The astonished observer pauses before this wonderful production of the thirteenth century and asks whence the artist came. 1 His memory may retrace the wonders of the chisel of Michael Angelo, and he may assent for a mo ment to the belief that Niccola, a miracle at his time, was a creative genius capable at once of transforming the art of Pisa. But this impression vanishes with the conviction that he is not a creative genius, and the re collection that the works of Michael Angelo in their grandeur still reveal also the greatness of Ghirlandaio and Donatello. The Ghirlandaio and Donatello of Niccola he cannot discover in any of the schools of Central Italy, any more than he can trace a single similar work previous to this pulpit, which is the creation of a man in the ma turity of his talent. He will inquire, if it be possible that all previous efforts of the master should have pe- 1 Vasari having said in the life of Niccola that that sculptor stu died at Pisa — affirms in that of Giovanni that he studied in Rome. Vol. I. p. 277.