Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent study day organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House focusing on the role of Pisa in Early Italian Art. This was the second study day in the series and the first to focus on a particular city. In the morning we started by looking at the early painting from Pisa focusing on the Byzantine style of Giunta Pisano. We looked at the various styles of Crucifix and how they changed from the open eyed living Christ to the contorted dead figure and how this followed the theology of the time. We then moved on to the sculpture of Nicola Pisano and talked about how he studies Roman sarcophagi and worked out the techniques involved in them to produce wonderful pulpits. The lecturer has excellent pictures of the pulpits at Pisa and Sienna. In the afternoon we moved on to Giovanni Pisano and looked at how he developed this style having worked with his father on the Sienna pulpit and how he developed the idea of figurative tombs and how this was taken u...