RESTORATION OF THE ART OP SCULPTURE. $6$ 



tvork of the thirteenth century, if hiftory did not 

 affirm it. 



Nicholas of Pifa was, both in architecture and fculp- 

 ture, a fcholar of the mafters of modern Greece, who 

 had been for feveral centuries revered in Italy as the 

 fole proprietors, of the art. It required a great force 

 of genius to raife himfelf above fo ftrong and inveterate 

 a prejudice. This he difplayed in its full extent at an 

 age when others are blindly forming themfelves on the 

 precepts and examples of their mafters. While an 

 apprentice, he was employed under thefe greek artifts 

 in the cathedral at Pifa. It happened that the Pifanefe, 

 who were then very powerful at lea, and carried on art 

 extenlive commerce, had brought with them fome 

 broken marble columns, of the beft times of the gre- 

 cian art, from the Levant. On one of them was 

 fculptured Meleager's chace and the Caledonian boar. 

 The beauty of thefe figures made fo flrong an im- 

 preflion on his mind, that he from that moment took 

 a diflike to the formal and ftiff manner of his mailers, 

 and thought of nothing now but the improvement of 

 the art by a diligent imitation of thefe beautiful pieces. 



He excelled in a fhort time all the artifts who were 

 then in the higheft reputation. For, fo early as the 

 year 1225, the Bolognefe invited him to execute a 

 marble monument over the body of St. Dominic. This 

 performance was accounted the beft that had been pro- 

 duced for fome centuries. He was afterwards called 

 into feveral cities of Italy to ornament their churches 

 with his works of fculpture. The bas-reliefs he exe- 

 cuted at Lucca, Pifa, Siena, Florence, and Orvieto, 

 gyre fo many teftimonies of the abilities of this great 



003 mailer. 



