PISA owes much to its position astride the river Arno as it approaches the sea: a major port under the Romans, the city subsequently had a key role in defending the coast, not least from the Saracens whom it drove from Sardinia in 1015–16. As a free commune which was already a major trading power in the Mediterranean, Pisa became an archiepiscopal see in 1092, and obtained substantial possessions both in Italy and in Sardinia in the ensuing century, taking advantage of the weakness of the Crusaders to demand commercial concessions in their ports. Always in uneasy competition with Florence, Pisa lost ground when local families contended for the signoria in the early fourteenth century; Sardinia was lost in 1327, and in 1399 the city was sold to the Visconti of Milan, and finally occupied by the Florentines six years later. Florentine rule was benign, and the Medici took a responsible interest in what became their second city, fostering public institutions and works, including the canal linking it with Cosimo I’s successor port of Livorno.
The great monuments of Pisa’s glory days are within the north-west angle of the walls: the huge Duomo, begun in 1063; the Baptistery to the west, commenced in 1152 by a builder of genius, Diotisalvi, but not completed for over 200 years; the Campanile, or Leaning Tower, to the east, begun in 1173 and finished in the mid-Trecento; and the appropriately sombre Camposanto, or cemetery, to the north, on which work started in 1278. The buildings are not aligned, yet the sense of space that flows between them was evidently not accidental. And each successive structure was clearly intended to respond to what was already built, so the richly decorated texture of the circular Baptistery, most sophisticated of medieval rotundas, answers the west front of the Duomo, while the columned tiers of the Campanile seem to float above us, not just because these lean but because they seem so weightless by comparison with the massive bulk of the Duomo. The builders of Pisa understood the properties of light, as one can see when the movement of the sun diminishes and then draws out the shadows cast by the narrow pilasters of the façade of the Camposanto.
To understand the achievement of the great sculptors of medieval Pisa, the Pisano, it makes sense to begin with the Baptistery. Here again the builders express a lightness of touch. On the left is the prodigious pulpit begun in 1260 by Nicola Pisano. This is decorated with scenes from the life of Christ, personifications of the Virtues, and, in the spandrels of the arches, the Prophets. Nicola’s genius was to learn from classical statuary how to give life to his forms. The revolution he started, and on which his young son Giovanni collaborated, was to transform the development of Italian sculpture. Nicola strove for the plausible, while Giovanni’s taste was more lyrical: his great pulpit of 1302–11 in the Duomo, reconstructed in 1926, is a highpoint of the Italian Gothic. There is a wonderful harmony between the structure itself and Giovanni’s sinuous sculpted forms. It takes a little time to realize how successful the interior of the Duomo is; the nave is flanked by double aisles, the cupola of the crossing borne on arches that imply a knowledge of Muslim architecture. Later accretions, individually distinguished but cumulatively almost oppressive, crowd in, and it is not even easy to concentrate on the five saints by Andrea del Sarto on the pilasters of the presbytery.
Camposanto.
The Camposanto suffered gravely in 1944. It is lined with a notable series of funerary monuments, including that of the connoisseur Count Francesco Algarotti, paid for by Frederick the Great of Prussia, and a large number of classical sarcophagi, as well as a vase in Parian marble, the figure of Dionysius which was used by Nicola in his pulpit in the Baptistery. The murals are of yet greater interest. Francesco Traini’s Triumph of Death and Last Judgement were the most arresting achievements of the greatest Pisan painter of the Trecento. By contrast, the scenes from the Old Testament by Benozzo Gozzoli strained even that discursive master’s narrative abilities.
Pisa is well endowed with churches, the Dominican Santa Catarina, with notable Trecento sculpture and painting, now rather outshining the rivals’ San Francesco, although this contains an impressive Baptism by Jacopo da Empoli. At the heart of the northern section of the city, on Piazza dei Cavalieri, is San Stefano dei Cavalieri, planned by Vasari as the church of the Order of Knights of San Stefano founded by Cosimo I. Banners taken from the Turks are ranged on the walls. Continuing southwards you reach the Arno, lined by houses that have changed relatively little since the early nineteenth century when Byron and other English visitors were drawn to the city. On the opposite bank, near the Ponte Solferino, is the quintessential monument of the Pisan Gothic, Santa Maria della Spina of 1323. Wholly harmonious in detail, this must always have seemed exiguous beside the great river.
On the north bank by the east end of the Lungarno Mediceo is the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo. Here, as nowhere else, you can survey the evolution of painting at Pisa. For the Pisano did not function in isolation. Nicola’s older contemporary, Giunta Pisano, was the great protagonist of Dugento painting in central Italy, and his signed Crucifix is a work of capital significance. His followers are comprehensively represented. Pisa’s relative economic eclipse in the Trecento was reflected in that of local painters, and so the great masterpieces in the collection henceforward tend to be by outsiders; among these are the Sienese Simone Martini’s pentaptych of 1319 and the Saint Paul from Masaccio’s altarpece of 1426 from Santa Maria del Carmine.
Like other great Italian cities, Pisa did not exist in isolation. The finest church in the vicinity, some five kilometres south-west, is the Romanesque San Piero di Grado, which marks the spot where Saint Peter disembarked. The isolated setting means that there is nothing to disturb our appreciation of the intelligent use of contrasting tufo and black and white stone from nearby San Giuliano, and the sharp detail of the mouldings. On the flank of the hills to the east of the city is the Certosa di Pisa, largely rebuilt in the Seicento and nobly positioned. Staying regularly nearby at Agnano, I developed an exaggerated affection for the Napoleonic aqueduct that brought water to the city.
