International studio (82.1925)

mceRHACionAL

nativity: fifteenth century cothic

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum oj Art

The real spirit of a style never dies. We see a true figure of the atmosphere and influence of

this Gothic spirit of the love of fun glancing down the Renaissance yet he did not fail to see, when he

from us from the beretted and smocked figure atop set about designing and carving his representation

of the Vanderbilt chateau on Fifth Avenue. We of the Nativity, that it was above all else a very

see it, when it is pointed out to us, in the combina- human and lowly scene and he inevitably sought

tion of the dollar mark and the orange blossoms in the Gothic for not a few of the details of his

in the ornamental border of the so-called "bride's composition.

door" in St. Thomas' Church on the same His Virgin Mother is essentially of his time m

thoroughfare. In the Renaissance there are the grace of her pose and draperies yet the expres-

occasional traces of it in spite of the fact that the sion on her face is truly Gothic in its sweet and

Renaissance was too magnificent in its general tender humanness. His St. Joseph preserves that

tone to concern itself with anything so lowly as curious detached place in the whole scheme that

pure fun and the life and manners of the poor. we have alluded to before. This curious tradition

Such a group, both human and humorous, as is one inseparable from representations of the

we illustrate here from the western portal of the Nativity from the earliest times of Christian Art,

twelfth century church at Moissac, is inconceiv- Pisano evidently preferring to go behind even the

able as coming from an artist of the Renaissance, Gothic era for this detail as suiting more the intel-

whether painter or sculptor. Giovanni Pisano was Icctual spirit of his day.

comic figures on french gothic beam
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

december i 9 2 5

one Jijty-nine