dence
of the modern revival upon the recovery of antique culture, we find that
his genius, in spite of its powerful originality and profoundly Christian
bias, required the confirmation which could only be derived from
Graeco-Roman precedent. In the Campo Santo at Pisa may still be seen a
sarcophagus representing the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, where once
reposed the dust of Beatrice, the mother of the pious Countess Matilda of
Tuscany. Studying the heroic nudities and noble attitudes of this
bas-relief, Niccola rediscovered the right way of art--not by merely
copying his model, but by divining the secret of the grand style. His work
at Pisa contains abundant evidence that, while he could not wholly free
himself from the defects of the later Romanesque manner, betrayed by his
choice of short and square-set types, he nevertheless learned from the
antique how to aim at beauty and freedom in his imitation of the living
human form. A marble vase, sculptured with Indian Bacchus and his train of
Maenads, gave him further help. From these grave or graceful classic forms,
satisfied with their own goodliness, and void of inner symbolism, the
Christian sculptor drank the inspiration of Renaissance art. In the
"Adoration of the Magi," carved upon his Pisan pulpit, Madonna assumes the
haughty pose of Theseus' wife; while the high priest, in the
"Circumcision," displays the majesty of Dionysus leaning on the neck of
Ampelus. Nor again is the naked vigour of Hippolytus without its echo in
the figure of the young man--Hercules or Fortitude--upon a bracket of the
same pulpit. These sculptures of Pisano are thus for us a symbol of what
happened in the age of the Revival. The old world and the new shook hands;
Christianity and Hellenism kissed each other. And yet they still remained
antagonistic--fused externally by art, but severed in the consciousness
that, during those strange years of dubious impulse, felt the might of
both. Monks leaning from Pisano's pulpit preached the sinfulness of
natural pleasure to women whose eyes were fixed on the adolescent beauty
of an athlete. Not far off was the time when Filarete should cast in
bronze the legends of Ganymede and Leda for the portals of S. Peter's,
when Raphael should mingle a carnival of more than pagan sensuality with
Bible subjects in Leo's Loggie, when Guglielmo della Porta should place
the naked portrait of Giulia Bella in marble at the feet of Paul III. upon
his sepulchre.[61]