In the late fourteenth century, while the pictorial decoration of the southern gallery of the Cemetery was still in progress, work continued on the opposing wall, where Piero di Puccio was called to paint the Stories of the Genesis through to The Flood, and, above the entrance to the Del Barbaresco chapel, the Coronation of the Virgin, the sinopia of which is in the Cemetery in lieu of the fresco which was almost completely destroyed.
A versatile artist who was extolled by his contemporaries, the recipient of very important commissions, who for a long time had been in charge of the decoration of the Cathedral of Orvieto, his home town, he has been recently rediscovered by the critics who have recognised him as one of the protagonists of the new revival of Giotto at the end of the 14th century, standing out for his insistence on the dilated plasticity of the figures, the inquisitiveness with which he lingers on realistic details, his ability to frame intricate stories, splitting them into episodes linked up by perspective acrobatics.
The most famous work painted by Piero di Puccio in the Cemetery of Pisa is the Cosmography. A circumcentric structure of the Universe held up by God the Father stands out in a double register: according to the Thomistic-Augustinian cosmologic conception, taken up by Dante in his Comedy, the Earth stands in the centre and is divided into three continents; this is followed by water, air and fire, then the planets, the star-studded sky with the zodiac, the crystal sky or "primum mobile", and the nine angelic hierarchies.
The meaning of this complex iconography partly lies in the idea of order and harmonious hierarchy that is conveyed by the image itself but was also made explicit by the inscriptions in the vernacular on the scrolls held by the Fathers of the Church portrayed in the framing and explained by the Latin inscriptions for the eyes of the learned people, held by Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine, who appeared at the bottom: today, only a painted version – and in any case only a part of it – is all that has been left of this impressive didactic body.
List of scenes
28 The Creation of the World, Piero di Puccio
29 Stories of Adam and Eve, Piero di Puccio
30 Stories of Cain and Abel, Piero di Puccio
31 Noah’s Ark and the Flood, Piero di Puccio
