In Person at Birkbeck College, Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, and Livestreamed.
19 March 2025, 17:00-18:30
At this Murray Seminar, Laura Jacobus will share her research on:
A ‘Most Pleasing Flower among Equally Excellent Sculptors’: Nicola and Giovanni Pisano at the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia
The Fontana Maggiore of Perugia, one of the best-preserved secular monuments of medieval Europe, is decorated by more than fifty sculptures. Its creators, Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni, were the two star sculptors of thirteenth-century Italy. This seminar paper takes a fresh look at the work, arguing that it has been significantly misunderstood in modern scholarship. Touching on a number of aspects of this radical revision, the paper will concentrate on one: what does the work say about the relationship between Nicola and Giovanni, only one of whom could be the ‘most pleasing flower among equally excellent sculptors’ referred to in the fountain’s remarkable inscription?
Book your place over on Birkbeck’s website.
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