The first great original Italian sculptor of the Renaissance was Nicola Pisano. He lived through almost the whole of the thirteenth century, being born about 1204, and dying in 1278. What were the early influences of Nicola Pisano, that helped to make him so much more more modern, more truly classic, than any of his age? In the first place, he was born at the moment when interest in ancient art was beginning to awaken; the early thirteenth century. In the Campo Santo of Pisa may be seen two of the most potent factors in his aesthetic education, the Greek sarcophagus on which was carved the Hunting of Meleager, and the Greek urn with Bacchic figures wreathing it in classic symmetry. With his mind tuned to the beautiful, the boy Nioola gazed at the work of genuine pagan Greek artists, who knew the sinuousness of the human form and the joy of living with no thought of the morrow. These joyous pagan elements, grafted on solemn religious surroundings and influences, combined to produce his peculiar genius. Basing his early endeavours on these specimens of genuine classical Greek art, there resulted his wonderful pulpits at Pisa and Siena, and his matchlessly graceful little Madonnas denote the Hellenistic sentiment for beauty. His work was a marked departure from the Byzantine and Romanesque work which constituted Italian sculpture up to that period. An examination of his designs and methods proves his immense originality. By profession he was an architect. Of his pulpit in Siena Charles Eliot Norton speaks with much appreciation. Alluding to the lions used as bases to its columns, he says: "These are the first realistic representations of living animals which the mediaeval revival of art has produced; and in vivacity and energy of rendering, and in the thoroughly artistic treatment of leonine spirit and form, they have never been surpassed." It is usually claimed that one may learn much of the rise of Gothic sculpture by studying the models in the South Kensington Museum. In a foot-note to such a statement in a book edited by Ruskin, the indignant editor has observed, "You cannot do anything of the kind. Pisan sculpture can only be studied in the original marble: half its virtue is in the chiselling!" Nicola was assisted in the work on his shrine of St. Dominic at Bologna by one Fra Guglielmo Agnelli, a monk of a very pious turn, who, nevertheless, committed a curious theft, which was never discovered until his own death-bed confession. He absconded with a bone of St. Dominic, which he kept for private devotions all his subsequent life! An old chronicler says, naively: "If piety can absolve from theft, Fra Guglielmo is to be praised, though never to be imitated." [Illustration: PULPIT OF NICOLA PISANO, PISA]