Designed as a church in which the uncovered nave enclosed, as a holy relic, the “holy land” brought from Palestine at the time of the Second Crusade, the Cemetery was built and largely decorated in the 14th century, Pisa’s last great century before Florence’s occupation.
Large frescoed scenes alternate on the outer walls, destined for the eye of the body and the mind, harmoniously in association with the sermons written and declaimed by the most famous orators of the time, first and foremost the Dominicans who played such a key role in the local religious and cultural scene.
Here the reflection on Life and Earthly and Eternal Death is entrusted to the sermons painted by the best artists of the time, the Pisa-born Francesco Traini and that Buffalmacco who was Boccaccio’s friend as well as the character of some of his hilarious stories. Around the mid-century, Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto’s pupil, was appointed to continue the didactic-moralising plan with the biblical stories of Job the Prophet, the emblem of the virtue of patience in the just man when faced with tragedy and suffering. Then the devotee is called to ascetic mediation by the latest exempla of the lives of the local saints – as told by a painter beloved by Dominicans, the Florentine Andrea Buonaiuti, and another two of the most famous artists of the time, Antonio Veneziano and Spinello Aretino – and the rereading of the Old Testament stories, painted by Piero di Puccio and completed in the 15th century by Benozzo Gozzoli.
© 2004-2007 Opera della Primaziale Pisana - credits & copyright
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