The outstretched arms of the infant Christ have been copied from nature, not merely borrowed from tradition.

The six kneeling angels display variety of attitude suited to several shades of devout affection and adoring service.
The head of the Madonna, heavy as it is and conventional in type, still strives to represent maternal affection mingled with an almost melancholy reverence.

Prolonging our study, we are led to ask whether the painter might not have painted more freely had he chosen--whether, in fact, he was not bound down to the antique mode of presentation consecrated by devout tradition.

This question occurs with even greater force before the wall-paintings ascribed to Cimabue in the church of S.Francis at Assisi.
It remained for Giotto Bondone, born at Vespignano in 1276, just at the date of Niccola Pisano's death, to carry painting in his lifetime even further than the Pisan sculptor had advanced the sister art.

Cimabue, so runs a legend luckily not yet discredited, found the child Giotto among the sheep-folds on the solemn Tuscan hill-side, drawing with boyish art the outline of a sheep upon a stone.[126] The master recognised his talent, and took him from his father's cottage to the Florentine _bottega_, much as young Haydn was taken by Renter to S.Stephen's at Vienna.