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Giovanni di Balduccio was an expatriate Tuscan from Pisa who carried the Tuscan Gothic to Bologna and Milan. His main work in Milan is the shrine of St Peter Martyr. It was modelled on the shrine of St Dominic made at Bologna by the workshop of Nicola Pisano in 1260-65. Giovanni di Balduccio, however, made a number of Gothic improvements including the addition to the lid of a fine Gothic tabernacle.
Reliefs on the front of the sarcophagus depicts the saint's funeral, his canonization, and his miraculous intervention in a storm at sea. Carved in an archaic but very legible style, figures neatly arranged row by row and the protagonists enlarged according to the conventions of hieratic perspective, they make it clear that the saint's remains are both highly efficacious and sanctioned by Church authority.
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