Giacomo della Quercia was the son of a goldsmith named Pietro di Agnolo, a citizen of Siena, and was born in Siena or its contado in 1371 or 1374. His first artistic studies were made in Siena itself where, there being then no great native sculptors, he drank inspiration almost solely from the great pulpit of the Duomo. This, perhaps, is what makes him so isolated a figure in the art of the Quattrocento; the heir of Niccolò Pisano, the forerunner of Michelangelo. He left Siena when it fell into the hands of the Duke of Milan, and went to Florence, where he was chiefly impressed by the work of Giotto and Andrea Pisano. In 1401 he entered the competition for the second bronze gates of the Baptistery, and came next to Ghiberti and Brunelleschi; his figures, says Vasari, were considered good, but lacking in refinement, _non avevano finezze_. A few years later, at Lucca, he carved that tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, made famous in our own days by the eloquent enthusiasm of Ruskin. His native city now began to recognise his genius. In 1409 he was commissioned to make the famous fountain of the Piazza del Campo, upon which he worked at intervals between 1412 and 1419--going off to do other work at Lucca, and forced by the Signoria to return under heavy financial penalties. In 1416 he was commissioned by the Operaio, or superintendent of the artistic work of the Duomo, to design the Font for the Baptistery, [Illustration: _The Pulpit of the Duomo, Siena._ (_Niccolò Pisano and his pupils._)] and in the following year to cast two bronze scenes, _storie_, for the same. But here again he undertook things elsewhere--in Bologna, this time--and the Signoria had to compel him to finish what he had begun, which he did in 1434. In the meanwhile, he had accomplished his supreme work at Bologna in the bas-reliefs on the pilasters of the door of San Petronio--those marvellous scenes from the Book of Genesis, in which he seems to anticipate the achievement of Michelangelo in the Cappella Sistina. Giacomo died at Siena in 1438. His style is grand and austere, full of force and vigour, with a kind of rugged greatness that contrasts curiously with the manner of contemporary Sienese painters; he dispenses with accessories, concentrating the interest upon the human figures in his stories. There is peculiar nobility and power in his treatment of the nude. "Sooth to say, Giacomo had only one pupil, and for him there was a century to wait; he was Michelangelo."[61]