A fresh start, at once conscious and scientific, was imperatively demanded.

This new beginning sculpture took in the brain of Niccola Pisano, who returned from the bye-paths of his predecessors to the free field of nature, and who learned precious lessons from the fragments of classical sculpture existing in his native town.

As though to prove the essential dependence of the modern revival upon the recovery of antique culture, we find that his genius, in spite of its powerful originality and profoundly Christian bias, required the confirmation which could only be derived from Graeco-Roman precedent.

In the Campo Santo at Pisa may still be seen a sarcophagus representing the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, where once reposed the dust of Beatrice, the mother of the pious Countess Matilda of Tuscany.

Studying the heroic nudities and noble attitudes of this bas-relief, Niccola rediscovered the right way of art--not by merely copying his model, but by divining the secret of the grand style.