Plate 7.9: Nicola Pisano, Pulpit (1266–1268). The Adoration of the Magi, the scene on this panel of the
Siena pulpit, was a very traditional Christian theme (see an early representation on the Franks Casket, Plate
2.8, pp. 70–71), but here the sculptor, Nicola Pisano, has imagined it as a crowd scene and filled it with little
details—like the camels—to make it “come to life.”
Within a half-century the weighty, natural forms of the sculptors found a home in
painting as well, above all in the paintings of Giotto (1266/1267–1337). In one of his
commissions to decorate the private chapel of the richest man in Padua, for example,
Giotto filled the walls with frescoes narrating humanity’s redemption through Christ,
culminating in the Final Judgment. (See Plate 7.10 on p. 274.) Throughout, Giotto
experimented with the illusion of depth, weight, and volume, his figures expressing
unparalleled emotional intensity as they reacted to events in the world-space created
by painted frames. In the Raising of Lazarus, a story told in John 11:1–46 and
depicted in Plate 7.11, we see the moment just after Christ has performed his
