Wonders of Italian Art

tess Matilda, had been laid, and which represented the chase of Meleager or of Hip- polytus, discovered and recognized the style of the ancients, which he succeeded in imitating in his own works. He is called Nicola dall' Urna, on account of having made, in 1231, the beautiful urn or sarcophagus of St. Dominic at Bologna. If we look back at the coarse sketches of bas- reliefs by which, half a century before, a certain Anselmo, called, however, Dadalus alter, had celebrated the retaking of Milan by Frederick Barbarossa, we perceive how far this first restorer of art had advanced. After Nicola Pisano came successively his son Giovanni, his pupil Arnolfo, his brothers Agostino and Agnolo of Siena, then Andrea Pisano, then Orcagna, and at last, at Florence, Donatello and Ghiberti. " Painting and sculpture," says Vasari, " those two sisters born on the same day and governed by the same soul, have never made a step the one without the other." Painting, then, must closely have followed the movement which Nicola of Pisa and his successors had given to art. Cimabue was born in 1240; and Vasari, who found it convenient to open his History with the name of the old Florentine master, says that in his time the whole race of artists was extinct (spento affatto tutto il numero degF artifici), and that God destined Cimabue to bring again to' light the art of painting. There is, in these words of the Plutarch of painters, who endeavours to raise so high the first of his " Illu... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.