It cannot be proved that any of the Pisani, properly so called, were among their number.

Lacking evidence to the contrary, we must give to Maitani, the master-spirit of the company, full credit for the sculpture carried out in obedience to his general plan.

As the church of S.Francis at Assisi formed an epoch in the history of painting, by concentrating the genius of Giotto on a series of masterpieces, so the Duomo of Orvieto, by giving free scope to the school of Pisa, marked a point in the history of sculpture.

It would be difficult to find elsewhere even separate works of greater force and beauty belonging to this, the first or architectural, period of Italian sculpture; and nowhere has the whole body of Christian belief been set forth with method more earnest and with vigour more sustained.[68] The subjects selected by these unknown craftsmen for illustration in marble, are in many instances the same as those afterwards painted in fresco by Michael Angelo and Raphael at Borne.

Their treatment, for example, of the creation of Adam and Eve, adopted in all probability from still earlier and ruder workmen, after being refined by the improvements of successive generations, may still be observed in the triumphs of the Sistine Chapel and the Loggie.[69] It was the practice of Italian artists not to seek originality by diverging from the traditional modes of presentation, but to prove their mastery by rendering these as perfect and effective as the maturity of art could make them.