ANNO MILLENO BIS CENTUM BISQUE TRIDENO HOC OPUS INSIGNE SCULPSIT NICOLA PISANUS. The people of Siena, moved by the fame of this work, which greatly pleased not only the Pisans but everyone who saw it, gave to Niccola the making of the pulpit of their Duomo, in which there is sung the Gospel; Guglielmo Mariscotti being Praetor. In this Niccola made many stories of Jesus Christ, with much credit to himself, by reason of the figures that are there wrought and with great difficulty almost wholly detached from the marble. Niccola likewise made the design of the Church and Convent of S. Domenico in Arezzo for the Lords of Pietramala, who erected it. And at the entreaty of Bishop Ubertini he restored the Pieve of Cortona, and founded the Church of S. Margherita for the Friars of S. Francis, on the highest point of that city. [Illustration: _Alinari_ THE VISITATION AND THE NATIVITY (_Detail, after_ Niccola Pisano, _from the Pulpit of the Baptistery, Siena_)] Wherefore, the fame of Niccola ever growing greater by reason of so great works, he was summoned in the year 1267, by Pope Clement IV, to Viterbo, where, besides many other works, he restored the Church and Convent of the Preaching Friars. From Viterbo he went to Naples to King Charles I, who, having routed and slain Conradin on the plain of Tagliacozzo, caused to be made on that spot a very rich church and abbey, burying therein the infinite number of bodies slain on that day, and ordaining afterwards that there should be prayers offered by many monks, day and night, for their souls; in which building King Charles was so well pleased with the work of Niccola that he honoured and rewarded him very greatly. Returning from Naples to Tuscany, Niccola stayed in Orvieto for the building of S. Maria, and working there in company with some Germans, he made in marble, for the facade of that church, certain figures in the round, and in particular two scenes of the Universal Judgment containing Paradise and Hell; and even as he strove, in the Paradise, to give the greatest beauty that he knew to the souls of the blessed, restored to their bodies, so too in the Hell he made the strangest forms of devils that can possibly be seen, most intent on tormenting the souls of the damned; and in this work he surpassed not merely the Germans who were working there but even his own self, to his own great credit. And for the reason that he made therein a great number of figures and endured much fatigue, it has been nothing but praised up to our own times by those who have had no more judgment than this much in sculpture.