568 RESTORATION OP THE ART OP SCULPTURE, 



He was, both in fculpture and architecture., the Bug- 

 naroti of his age ; and not only his fon, John of Pifa, 

 who excelled him in both, but all Italy, formed itfelf 

 in thofe arts, by the model his works prefented. 



While, through the talents of this extraordinary 

 genius and his fcholars, the art of fculpture not only 

 revived, but even attained to' a perfection which bor- 

 dered on that it reached in the iixteenth century,* flou- 

 rifhed Cimabue and his difciple Giotto, with the fame 

 of being the restorers of the art of painting. But, if 

 we compare the painting of both thefe with the per- 

 formances in fculpture by Nicholas of Pifa, they feem 

 to us more like the rude eflays of young practitioners 

 than works to be brought in competition with his ; 

 and we are ftruck with aftonifhment, how it was pof- 

 fible that painting, which refts on the fame principles 

 with fculpture in their firft advances, fhould remain fo 

 far behind it. In the fame cathedral at Orvieto there 

 are even paintings by Ambrofius Lorezetti and Peter 

 Cavallini, who lived almoft a whole century later, and 

 were reckoned by their contemporaries among the 

 abler! painters, which miift greatly yield in point of 

 perfection to the firft productions of reviving fculpr 

 tu re. When now the fculptor had once made a be- 

 ginning to improve his art by the ftudy of the antique, 

 and this with fuch good fuccefs, it is not to be com- 

 prehended, why the painter had not recourfe to the 

 fame means ; at leaft how he came to remain at fuch a 

 difrance behind in drawing. It is flill more wonderful, 

 that Dante and Petrarch, men of the finefi; tafte and the 

 loftier! fancy, who had the works of the Pifanefe fculp- 

 tor and. his fon before their eyes, and might compare with 

 : then} 



