The Italian sculptor Nicola Pisano (ca. 1220-1278) liberated sculpture from the hieratic Byzantine manner. His art marked the beginning of the Italian Gothic style.

The birthplace of Nicola Pisano has been the subject of speculation among scholars. His name would seem to indicate that he was a Pisan, but two documents relating to the marble pulpit of the Cathedral in Siena (1265-1268) that he executed refer to him as Nicola d'Apulia (Nicholas of Apulia, in southern Italy) rather than the more common Nicola Pisano. The significance of his birthplace derives from the remarkably classical quality of his earliest extant work, the marble pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa, signed and dated 1260. Emperor Frederick II, whose court was near Naples, was an admirer of ancient Roman civilization. He encouraged artists to work in the more realistic style of Roman antiquity rather than the more abstract contemporary Romanesque and Byzantine...