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Chap. IV. NICCOLA PISANO. 133 however, of a powerful and bony build, is essentially classic in form. The adoration of the Magi. It would be difficult to find a finer group in this century, than that of the Virgin and child adored by the kneeling king, who kisses the Saviour’s foot. The foreground figures on horseback seem to be copied from the Roman antique. The presentation in the temple is ill ordered and over crowded, the /light into Egypt simple and not ill rendered. The massacre of the innocents. Niccola had an opportunity here of expressing action in the most varied forms; and the movement of single figures is accordingly fine and forcible; whilst some faces are remarkable for character and expres sion. One cannot but mark in the vehemence of gesture of soldiers, tearing babes from the grasp of their mothers, or in the act of killing them, a certain tendency to exaggera tion. Yet it is obvious that Niccola’s treatment of these groups was of service to later artists and even to Giotto. The massacre of the innocents is however a subject in which even the great Florentine found some difficulty to conciliate action with good distribution, and Niccola is here less suc cessful in arranging his groups than in the pulpit of Pisa. The crucifixion. The student of Roman classic form will find it here, but Niccola endeavoured, as it would seem, to combine classicism and tbe study of nature; hence a per ceptible want of unity. Not only was the Christian ideal of the divine nature of the Redeemer absent from the mind of the sculptor, but he lost the conventional nobleness of the classic form in a painful realistic study of nature. The Saviour is here less after the Roman antique than in the pulpit of Pisa, but he is also worse proportioned. The thorax is that of Hercules, and the arms disproportionately short. In the group of the fainting Virgin, to the left of the cross, the head is painful in expression and large for the frame, and the draperies are of many and meaningless folds. The angels about the Saviour’s head are short and defective. The Last Judgment. The same faults mark the Saviour distributing blessings and curses and the Saviour crucified. Here is little repose, or dignity, but a mixture of conventional classic form with realistic anatomy. The proportions are defective, but the arms, instead of being too short, are too long, whilst the torso is small. The angels around
