Nicola Pisano’s pulpit for the Cathedral of Siena (1265–1268) and his Arca of San Domenico (1264–1267) are two of the earliest Italian monuments to incorporate gilded glass panels. Nicola and his workshop made the latter work, a monumental
marble tomb to commemorate the revered founder of the Dominican order for the church dedicated to the saint in Bologna, in 1264.44 Though Nicola’s design was modified significantly from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, aspects of the original tomb are still visible. Modeled on ancient Roman art, as was typical of this artist’s oeuvre, the sarcophagus features narrative relief sculptures showing episodes from the life of Saint Dominic on all four sides.
The figural groups fill most of the frame, leaving only small portions of a vis-ible background (Figure 3.4). It is these small areas that are of greatest interest to this discussion because they are decorated with a series of small gilded glass panels.
In a manner similar to the technique of verre églomisé, portions of the back of the panel are gilded—in this case the gilding is shaped into rosettes and other geometric shapes—and then the entire panel is backed with bright-red pigment.
The result, when viewed from the front, reveals golden shapes set against a red background. When the lighting conditions were right, the gilded glass would have produced bright sparkling highlights visible from a significant distance. A closer viewer would have been struck by the prominent use of deep, almost blood-red pigment, a fitting color choice indeed for a burial monument.
Figure 3.4: Nicola Pisano, Arca of San Domenico, 1264–1267, Basilica of Saint Dominic, Bologna. Source: Georges Jansoone via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5).
Nicola Pisano was both participating in a larger artistic dialog and forging new ground when it came to the way in which he used gilded glass. Certainly his approach should be situated alongside that found in mosaics, Cosmati, and early Christian roundels, as Nicola would have been familiar with at least some of these traditions. Similar to mosaics or Cosmati, the reflections created by the gilded glass in the Arca appear to strike out from the tomb toward the viewer’s eyes.
Whether or not he understood the visual theories of Plato or the Neoplatonists, his art—and his visual culture as a whole—was at least somewhat infused by the Byzantine tradition and its corresponding spiritual symbolism. The highlights of the Arca could have, therefore, resonated with a wider, more general apprecia-tion for the “fiery rays” of the extramission visual theory and, in doing so, func-tioned as observable proof of the visual contact made between viewer and sacred monument.
Nicola’s decision to use gilded glass in the Arca may have been influenced by older, established, connections between gold glass and relics. As will be dis-cussed in greater detail in the chapters that follow, relics occupied a unique posi-tion within the Christian church. They were particularly sacred because of their uncanny ability to conjure aspects of a saint’s earthly existence and their spiritual transcendence simultaneously. Relics paradoxically embodied an intersection of the spiritual and earthly worlds. In addition to the examples already mentioned—
such as Cennini’s recommendation, Orcagna’s Tabernacle, and the tombs adorned with Cosmati—there were earlier, biblical precedents for using gold and glass to adorn holy places. According to Exodus 25, when God gave Moses directions to build the Ark of the Covenant, he ordered that gold be used extensively in its construction. The instructions are described as follows:
You shall overlay [the ark] with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and you shall make a gold molding around it. You shall cast four gold rings for it and fasten them on its four feet, and two rings shall be on one side of it and two rings on the other side of it. You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. … You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide. You shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat.
Interestingly, the directives for the ark do not mention gemstones, pigments, or other precious materials; the only decorative specifications describe the use of gold.
Other biblical references reinforce the notion that gold was an especially appropriate material for decorating a place of convergence between heaven and
earth. King Solomon extensively used gold in the construction of his temple in a manner similar to the Ark of the Covenant. As it was described in 1 Kings 6:21–22,
So Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold. And he drew chains of gold across the front of the inner sanctuary, and he overlaid it with gold. He overlaid the whole house with gold, until all the house was finished. Also the whole altar which was by the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold.
Ultimately, both the temple and the ark were modeled on the most revered struc-ture of all: Heavenly Jerusalem, which “shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal”
and its street “was of gold, as pure as transparent glass,” according to Revelations 21:9–21.
Gold—and by extension gilded glass—also had unusual physical qualities that may have contributed to its ability to adorn such sacred monuments. The appearance of gold was mutable; the very same piece of gold could look quite different depending on the environment. When lit by a strong light, a golden sur-face could shine with a bright yellow color, and without a strong light source, the same piece could appear to have darker, brownish hues and a more matte surface texture. Isidore of Seville comments on the fluctuating nature of the material in his Etymologies (ca. 615–630), noting how it “is named from ‘gleam’ (aura), that is from its luster, because it gleams more when the air reflects it” and “it is natural for the luster of metal to gleam more when it is reflected with another light.”45
Gold’s strong connection with divine symbolism may, therefore, stem from its changeable appearance and elusive nature, formal qualities that suggest aspects of immateriality. Lois Heidmann Shelton suggests that, for Byzantines, gold held special meaning because “within the hierarchy of the material and spiritual worlds, gold was the material closest to the immaterial and was connected by its luminosity, the source of its immaterial appearance, with the beauty and light of the Divine.”46 The gilded backgrounds of Byzantine icons were, therefore, crucial to their effectiveness as conduits of the divine because of their ability to connect the spiritual and material worlds, to give visible form to the invisible.
Western veneration of relics and the Eucharist was similar in nature to the Byzantine veneration of icons because these sacred treasures represented a tan-gible point of contact between heaven and earth. As the gold did for the icons, the gilded glass panels in the Arca brought visual form to the dichotomy between the heavenly and earthly with their sharp, glowing highlights. Thus, while gold’s material value, beauty, formal qualities, and royal and divine associations may
have all informed Nicola Pisano’s decision to use it in the Arca, he also may have realized the ability of gilded glass to denote a convergence between the material and immaterial realms.
The interplay among the naturalistic sculptural details of Nicola’s Arca, the reflective surface of the gilded glass, and the bright-red color of the pigment cre-ate a complex viewing experience with several layers of potential meaning. The highlights reflecting off the gold glass would have been a striking feature of the monument upon one’s first impression. Even from a great distance, the bright, glittering light would have commanded the viewer’s attention, inviting closer inspection of the sacred monument. As one approached the Arca and the sculp-tural details became clearer, the sparkling reflections may have competed with the figurative reliefs, at times even obscuring them, in a sense dematerializing them.
As one strove to see and investigate the reliefs representing scenes from the saint’s earthly existence, the glittering reflections persisted, and at the same time, the red pigment behind became more visible.
The bold use of red pigment for the Arca is conspicuous because no other extant work of Italian verre églomisé features it so prominently, nor does another artwork feature it at the exclusion of all other colors. When other verre églomisé works do use red, it is primarily reserved for the blood gushing from the cruci-fied Christ’s side. Thus, the contrast between the gilded glass and the sculptures creates a visual tension that mirrors the tension between Saint Dominic’s human life and his saintly existence found in the relics. The relief panels tell the stories of Dominic’s exemplary life, while the red pigment evokes the notion of the saint’s blood, and the light from the gilded glass symbolizes the saint’s heavenly afterlife.
Though art-historical scholarship has not yet addressed Nicola’s inspiration or motivation for this innovative use of gilded glass, given his strong interest in classi-cal art and the many ancient Roman gold-glass roundels found in the catacombs, it seems logical to posit that this could have been a contributing factor. In his biography of Nicola from the sixteenth century, Giorgio Vasari records that Nicola went to Viterbo and Naples. Although Vasari doesn’t mention a trip to Rome, the Eternal City is located between these two cities and it would be hard to imagine an artist so interested in ancient Roman art missing a chance to visit there.
As mentioned previously, one of the most alluring destinations in Rome would have been the catacombs with their relic-like roundels of gold glass. Medie-val Christian visitors making their way through the dark catacombs by candlelight would have found the gold-glass roundels and their glowing reflections visually striking and spiritually powerful. In such a setting, the gold glass demarked the location of important relics and in turn, the point of contact between the divine
and the human spheres. As the physical remains or possessions of human beings who had become saintly spirits, relics belonged to both sacred and secular worlds simultaneously. Even if Nicola had not visited the catacombs in Rome, his strong interest in ancient Roman art made it likely that he would have been interested in other examples of it, for instance in the Camposanto of Pisa, which may have also had examples of gold glass.
Whatever his familiarity with or reason for using verre églomisé, Nicola must have found the medium effective, because he also used it in his next important commission. Only a year after receiving his commission for the Arca, Nicola and his workshop began work on the pulpit for the cathedral of Siena. This project was commissioned by the Opera of the Sienese Cathedral as part of a citywide improvement program, a program that reflected this city’s cultural ascendancy as well as its fervent dedication to the Virgin Mary. Within the decade preceding work on the pulpit, Siena had enlisted and received the protection of the Virgin Mary to defeat the Florentines at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260 and completed construction on their cathedral, which was dedicated to the Madonna.
Similar to the Arca, the pulpit for the Cathedral of Siena included small pan-els of verre églomisé decorated with floral motifs set within the trilobed cusping and running along the base of the marble panels (Figure 3.5). Unlike the red pig-ment used in the Arca, here Nicola only used black paint to seal the gold leaf, and the amount of glass in the pulpit is significantly more limited. The verre églomisé embellishments certainly added an impressive lighting effect to the pulpit, but because it did not function as a tomb or reliquary, the symbolic interpretation assigned to gold in the discussion of Nicola’s Arca does not readily apply. Further-more, the pulpit in Siena features much less verre églomisé, and what gold glass is present is relegated to the base of the pulpit. It does not fill the background of the narrative panels. Therefore, upon initial comparison, the pulpit and Arca appear to have little in common. This is surprising, considering that the two works were made by the same workshop at about the same time.
When one considers the function of this structure, explanations for Nico-la’s differing treatment of the verre églomisé on his pulpit become more clear.
Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, priests would ascend such a pulpit in order to better address the congregation and read the Gospel or Epistles.
However, this was not the only use for such a pulpit. The podium’s height and visibility also made it the ideal place from which to display the church’s prized relic collection.47 Anita Moskowitz, in her discussion of the pulpit’s use for the display of relics, notes that the relics of Saint Ranierus were displayed from a pulpit in 1161 in the cathedral of Pisa. Thus, like the tomb of Saint Dominic,
Figure 3.5: Nicola Pisano, Detail of Pulpit showing two glass panels on either side of the trilobed arch, 1265–1268, Siena Cathedral, Siena. Source: Author.
Nicola’s pulpit could have also been associated with relics and therefore warranted a similar use of the verre églomisé. However, as the pulpit’s primary function was preaching and the reading of the gospel, the use of the medium was significantly reduced.48
Therefore, Nicola Pisano may have used gilded glass to decorate areas associ-ated with relics or evoke ideas relassoci-ated to divine illumination. In doing so, he fol-lowed the example of early Christian Romans, an artistic source he highly valued.
Whether or not he was specifically aware of the extramission theory of vision and its fiery optical rays, he could still capitalize on the striking lighting effects created by the reflective gilded glass in order to create a powerful connection between viewer and his monument. Nicola Pisano’s Arca and his pulpit for Siena’s cathe-dral are not only instructive for their innovative adoption of gilded glass, but as two of the earliest major Italian monuments to incorporate the revived medium, they are also important case studies for an understanding of later usages of gilded glass, such as those by Simone Martini.