Nicola Pisano

Nicola Pisano worked in Italy sometime between 1220 and 1284, carving in a manner that set him apart from his medieval contemporaries. Where others followed Gothic convention, he studied classical Roman sculpture and brought its forms—its weight, its drapery, its physicality—into his own work. That backward glance became a hinge: some call him the founder of modern sculpture, not for inventing from nothing but for recovering something lost and making it live again in stone.