|
Nino Pisano maintained his purely Gothic formal vocabulary throughout the 1350s, as is shown by the statue of the Virgin and Child (Santissima Annunziata, Trapani), the crucifix from the Camposanto of Pisa (San Michele in Borgo, Pisa), a half figure of Christ from Santa Cecilia (Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa), both statues of an Annunciation group in Santa Caterina, Pisa, and the large relief of the Virgin and Child with Angels in Pieve di San Giovanni, Arliano, Lucca.
At Arliano, the figure of Madonna is sculpted in half relief in the centre of the dossal holding the Child with her left arm, while with her right she hands him a fruit. The slight and elegant curvature of the body, accentuated by the prominence of the right knee and the striated folds of the mantle, contrasts with the pose of the head, which is almost in half profile.
This central group, in white marble, has a hollowed back and is fixed to the back with an iron hook. The background, on which the two angels with their hands joined on the chest are sculpted in bas-relief, is in white and gray marble, and has the shape of an arched aedicule, surmounted by a cherub, and flanked by two octagonal pillars. The latter, originally, had to support a cuspidated roof which is now lost.
It is assumed that this work belonged to a more complex structure, analogous to the frontal of the church of San Francesco in Pisa, sculpted by Nino's brother Tommaso in about 1369.
|
