We will not enter into a discussion of the relative merits of Northern and Southern art; whether the great revival really originated in France or Italy; but this is certain:  Nicolo Pisano lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century, while the great sculptures of Notre Dame, Paris, and those of Chartres, were executed half a century earlier.

But prior to either were the Byzantine and Romanesque sculptures in Italy and Southern France.  Our attention must first be turned to them.  Charles Eliot Norton’s definition of this word Romanesque is as satisfactory as any that could be instanced:  “It very nearly corresponds to the term of Romance as applied to language.  It signifies the derivation of the main elements, both in plan and construction, from the works of the later Roman Empire.  But Romanesque architecture” (and this applies equally to sculpture) “was not, as it has been called, a corrupted imitation of the Roman architecture, any more than the Provencal or the Italian language was a corrupted imitation of the Latin.  It was a new thing, the slowly matured product of a long period of many influences.”

All mediaeval carving was subordinate to architecture, therefore every piece of carving was designed with a view to being suitable to appear in some special place.  The most striking difference between mediaeval and later sculpture is that the latter is designed as a thing apart, an object to be stood anywhere to be admired for its intrinsic merit, instead of being a functional component in a general scheme for beautifying a given building.

The use of the interlace in all primitive arts is very interesting.  It undoubtedly began in an unconscious imitation of local architecture.  For instance, in the British Isles, the building in earliest times was with wattles:  practically walls of basket work.  William of Malmsbury says that Glastonbury was “a mean structure of wattle work,” while of the Monastery of Iona, it is related that in 563, Columba “sent forth his monks to gather twigs to build his hospice.”  British baskets were famous even so far away as Rome.  So the first idea of ornament was to copy the interlacing forms.  The same idea was worked out synchronously in metal work, and in illuminated books.  Carving in stone, wood, and ivory, show the same influence.

Debased Roman sculptural forms were used in Italy during the fourth and fifth centuries.  Then Justinian introduced the Byzantine which was grafted upon the Roman, producing a characteristic and fascinating though barbaric combination.  This was the Romanesque, or Romano-Byzantine, in the North of Italy generally being recognized as the Lombard style.  The sculptures of this period, from the fifth to the thirteenth century, are blunt and heavy, but full of quaint expression due to the elemental and immature conditions of the art.  Many of the old Byzantine carvings are to be seen in Italy.