ea,
already so fatal to art, that either the aim of the antique may take
place together with the purposes, or its traditions become elevatory of
the power, of Christian art; or that the glories of Giotto and the
Sienese are in any wise traceable through Niccola Pisano to the
venerable relics of the Campo Santo.

50. Lord Lindsay's statement, as far as it regards Niccola himself, is
true.

* * *

"His improvement in Sculpture is attributable, in the first instance, to
the study of an ancient sarcophagus, brought from Greece by the ships of
Pisa in the eleventh century, and which, after having stood beside the
door of the Duomo for many centuries as the tomb of the Countess
Beatrice, mother of the celebrated Matilda, has been recently removed to
the Campo Santo. The front is sculptured in bas-relief, in two
compartments, the one representing Hippolytus rejecting the suit of
Phaedra, the other his departure for the chase:--such at least is the
most plausible interpretation. The sculpture, if not super-excellent, is
substantially good, and the benefit derived from it by Niccola is
perceptible on the slightest examination of his works. Other remains of
antiquity are preserved at Pisa, which he may have also studied, but
this was the classic well from which he drew those waters which became
wine when poured into the hallowing chalice of Christianity. I need
scarcely add that the mere presence of such models would have availed
little, had not nature endowed him with the quick eye and the intuitive
apprehension of genius, together with a purity of taste which taught him
how to select, how to modify and how to reinspire the germs of
excellence thus presented to him."--Vol. ii., pp. 104, 105.

* * *

51. But whatever characters peculiarly classical were impressed upon
Niccola by this study, died out gradually among his scholars; and in
Orcagna the Byzantine manner finally triumphed, leading the way to the
purely Christian sculpture of the school of Fiesole, in its turn swept
away by the returning wave of classicalism. The sculpture of Orcagna,
Giotto, and Mino da Fiesole, would have been what it was, if Niccola had
been buried in his sarcophagus; and this is sufficiently proved by
Giotto's remaining entirely uninfluenced by the educated excellence of
Andrea Pisano, while he gradually bent the Pisan down to his own
uncompromising simplicity. If, as Lord Lindsay asserts, "Giotto had
lear