If nothing of his handiwork were left but the bas-relief of the "Inferno" on the Pisan pulpit, the torsos of the men struggling with demons in that composition would prove this point.

It remains his crowning merit to have first expressed the mythology of Christianity and the sentiment of the Middle Ages with the conscious aim of a real artist.

And here it may be noticed that, a true Italian, he infused but little of intense or mystical emotion into his art.

Niccola is more of a humanist, if this word may be applied to a sculptor, than some of his immediate successors.

The hexagonal pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa, the octagonal pulpit in the cathedral of Siena, the fountain in the marketplace of Perugia, and the shrine of S.Dominic at Bologna, all of them designed and partly finished between 1260 and 1274 by Niccola and his scholars, display his mastery over the art of sculpture in the maturity of his genius.