The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (374 page)

(1720–78).
Italian etcher, archaeologist, and architect, born in Venice but active for almost all his career in Rome, where he settled in 1740. In Venice he had studied perspective and stage design and in Rome he achieved great popularity with his dramatically conceived etchings of the ancient and modern city—the
Vedute
—published from 1745 onwards. He often altered the scale of buildings to make them look even grander than they are in actuality (Horace
Walpole
said he ‘conceived visions of Rome beyond what it boasted even in the meridian of its splendour’) and his work played a major role in shaping the popular mental image of the city. Piranesi produced numerous other plates of Roman antiquities and architectural details, but his most original works are a series of
Carceri d'Invenzione
, fantastic imaginary prisons, begun
c.
1745 and reworked in 1761. These striking and obsessive works were later claimed by the
Surrealists
as an anticipation of their principles and their influence can be seen in 20th-cent. horror movies. Only one of Piranesi's architectural designs was built (Sta Maria del Priorato, Rome, 1764–6), but he was important as an architectural polemicist, most notably in his
Della magnificenza ed architettura de' Romani
(1761), in which he championed the superiority of Roman architecture over Greek. He influenced not only architects, but also stage designers and painters of
capricci
such as his friend Hubert
Robert
, and he had a powerful impact on the literary imagination. William
Beckford
, for example, said that in writing his Gothic novel
Vathek
(1786) ‘I drew chasms, and subterranean hollows, the domain of fear and torture, with chains, racks, wheels and dreadful engines in the style of Piranesi.’ His etchings continued to be published for many years after his death and his work was continued by his son
Francesco
(1758–1810).

 
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(
c.
1395–1455?).
Italian painter and medallist. He presumably came from Pisa (hence his nickname), but he spent his early years in Verona, a city with which he kept up his association for most of his life. His successful career also took him to the Vatican and numerous courts of northern Italy. With
Gentile da Fabriano
, Pisanello is regarded as the foremost exponent of the
International Gothic
style in Italian painting, but most of his major works have perished, including frescos in Venice (in which he collaborated with Gentile) and in Rome (in which he completed work left unfinished by Gentile at his death). His surviving documented frescos are
The Annunciation
(S. Fermo, Verona, 1423–4) and
St George and the Princess of Trebizond
(Sta Anastasia, Verona, 1437–8), and attributed to him are some fragments of murals of jousting knights in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, uncovered in 1968 and one of the most spectacular art discoveries of recent years. A very small number of panel paintings is also given to him, two being in the National Gallery, London. On the other hand, a good many of his drawings survive, those of animals being particularly memorable. They show his keen eye for detail and his ability to convey an animal's personality. Pisanello was also the greatest portrait medallist of his period and arguably of the whole
Renaissance
, his work setting standards of delicacy, precision, and clarity that have not been surpassed.

 
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(
c.
1290–1348/9?).
Italian sculptor and architect, not related to Nicola and Giovanni
Pisano
. He probably came from Pontedera near Pisa (he is sometimes called Andrea da Pontedera), but he is first documented in Florence in 1330, when he received the commission to make a pair of bronze doors for the Baptistery. The doors, finished in 1336, are the first of the three great sets for the Baptistery (the other two are by
Ghiberti
), and represent twenty scenes from the life of St John the Baptist and eight Virtues. They show a melodious line and a jeweller's refinement of execution. By 1340 Andrea was architect to Florence Cathedral (succeeding
Giotto
) and the only other works certainly by him or from his workshop are
reliefs
and statues for the cathedral's campanile. In their clear-cut designs the reliefs show the influence of Giotto's painting. In 1347 Andrea was appointed master of works at Orvieto Cathedral, where he was succeeded by his son
Nino
(d.1368) in 1349. Nino is known from documents to have been active as a goldsmith and architect, but all his surviving works are sculptures in marble. He was much less distinguished as an artist than his father, but noteworthy in being one of the first sculptors to specialize in free-standing life-size statues.

 
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Pisano , Nicola
(d. 1278/84) and
Giovanni

(d. after 1314).
Italian sculptors and architects, father and son. They were the greatest sculptors of their period and stand at the head of the tradition of Italian sculpture in the same way that
Giotto
stands at the head of the tradition of Italian painting. They often worked together, but their styles are distinctive. Nicola came from Apulia, where the emperor Frederick II (d. 1250) had encouraged a
classical
revival, and his first known work, the pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa (dated 1260 Pisan style, i.e. 1259) shows his brilliant adaptation of
antique
forms to a new context. He transformed a Dionysus into Simeon at the Presentation of Christ, a nude Hercules into a personification of Christian Fortitude, and a Phaedra into the Virgin Mary. But instead of following the
Romanesque
convention of separating episodes into compartments arranged in bands, he combined them into the formal unity of single pictures on each side of the pulpit with great power and dramatic effect. Several of the figures were directly inspired by ancient sarcophagi that Nicola saw in the Campo Santo in Pisa, but they are much more than simple borrowings, for he made them the vehicle for expressing richly varied human feeling. Nicola followed the Pisa pulpit with a similar but more complex work for Siena Cathedral (1265–8). The carving is deeper, the contrasts between light and shadow sharpened, the
reliefs
more densely packed and full of movement. By then Nicola had a large workshop, his assistants including his son Giovanni and
Arnolfo
di Cambio. His last great project was the large fountain in the public square of Perugia, which he and Giovanni finished in 1278. The dozens of reliefs are a typical medieval mixture: biblical scenes, heraldic beasts, personifications of seasons and places, and local dignitaries; but the vigour and spontaneity of the carving express a new freedom and naturalness.
By 1284 Nicola was dead. Between the Perugia fountain and this date, Giovanni, alone or in company with his father, had carved the sculpture for the outside of the Pisa Baptistery (now in the Museo Nazionale). Here for the first time in Tuscany a scheme of monumental statuary was incorporated into architecture. Giovanni developed this much further in Siena, where from 1284 onwards he designed the façade of the cathedral and carried out much of the sculptural decoration (some of the figures have been transferred to the cathedral museum and a magnificent fragment is in the Victoria and Albert Museum). It is the most richly decorated of all the great Italian
Gothic
cathedral façades, and the statuary has tremendous energy and inner life. Giovanni's last two great works were pulpits for S. Andrea, Pistoia (1300–1), and Pisa Cathedral (1302–10). They are modelled on those of his father, but more elegant in style (showing French Gothic influence) and also more emotionally charged. The Pisa pulpit was damaged in a fire in 1599, then dismantled and reassembled, some parts being dispersed; several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, New York, have fragments that are said to come from it. Giovanni also made a number of free-standing statues, the best known of which is the
Madonna and Child
on the altar of the Arena Chapel in Padua (
c.
1305). Its grandeur and humanity suggests a close kinship with Giotto, amid whose celebrated frescos it stands.