pulpit to the church, sculptured in the style of the Roman decadence, between two profile medallions in low relief.[411] The material of the whole is fair white marble, enriched with mosaics, and wrought into beautiful scroll-work of acanthus leaves and other Romanesque adornments.  An inscription, “Ego Magister Nicolaus de Bartholomeo de Fogia Marmorarius hoc opus feci;” and another, “Lapsis millenis bis centum bisque trigenis XPI. bissenis annis ab origine plenis,” indicate the artist’s name and the date of the work.

It is difficult to understand how anyone could trace such a resemblance between this rectangular ambo and the hexagonal structure in the Pisan Baptistery as would justify them in asserting both to be the products of the same school.  The pulpit of Niccola da Foggia does not materially differ from other ambones in Italy—­from several, for instance, in Amalfi and Ravello; while the distinctive features of Niccola Pisano’s work—­the combination of classically studied bas-reliefs with Gothic principles of construction, the feeling for artistic unity in the composition of groups, the mastery over plastic form, and the detached allegorical figures—­are noticeable only by their total absence from it.  What is left by way of similarity is a sculpturesque refinement in Sigelgaita’s portrait, not unworthy of Pisano’s own chisel.  This, however, is but a slender point whereon to base so large a pyramid of pure conjecture.  Surely we must look elsewhere than at Ravello or at Foggia for the origin of Niccola Pisano.

Why then should we reject tradition in this instance?  Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle reply; because the sculpture of no Tuscan city before his period is good enough to have led up to him.  Yet this may be contested; and at all events it will not be easy to prove from the Ravello head of Sigelgaita that a more advanced school existed in the south.  The fact is that the art of the stone-carvers or marmorarii had never entirely died out since the days of Roman greatness; nor was Niccola without respectable predecessors in the very town of Lucca, where he produced the first masterpiece of modern sculpture.  The circular font of S. Frediano, for example, carved with figures in high relief by a certain Robertus of the twelfth century, combines the Romanesque mannerism with the naivete of mediaeval fancy.  I might point in particular to two knights seated on one horse in what I take to be the company of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, as an instance of a successful attempt to escape from the formalism of a decayed style.  At the same time the general effect of the embossed work of this font is fine; nor do we fail to perceive that the artist retained some portion of the classic feeling for grandiose and monumental composition.  Far less noteworthy, yet still not utterly despicable, is the bas-relief of Biduinus over the side-door of S. Salvatore at Lucca.  What Niccola added of indefeasibly his own to the style of these continuators