CHAPTER XIII

ON SOME EXAMPLES OF WOOD SCULPTURE OF THE TRECENTO AND QUATTROCENTO IN ITALY

IT

T would be impossible to approach, without the greatest diffidence, the task of attempting to describe Italian art in wood within the limits of a few pages. The period to which we have to go for the best examples is one which is intimately connected with the revival of art in which Italy played so overwhelmingly prominent a part. Italian sculpture in wood has been hitherto little known and little studied, at any rate by English writers. There are certain museums, such as the Museo Civico of Pisa, where a fair amount of fine examples is to be found, but much is distributed in various cathedrals or hidden away in village churches where it has often suffered from neglect, from unskilful restorations, and from additions of tawdry drapery. It is but recently, in 1905, that a considerable number of interesting examples of the art of wood-carving in the Abruzzi were gathered together at a special exhibition. Contrary to a formerly received opinion (it may be noted that Molinier, in his Histoire de l'Art, treats the subject very summarily, and confines his attention almost entirely to tarsia work), the art has always been popular in Italy, and as elsewhere has followed on the lines of the more important sculptures in stone, marble, and bronze. The story of sculpture in Italy is evidence of a wide-reaching effect on the art of other countries