NICCOLÒ DELL' ARCA

Early Renaissance Italian sculptor (also called Niccolò da Bari) famed for his expressionistic use of northern Gothic realism in combination with true compositional principles of Renaissance art. Niccolò takes his name from the tomb (arca in Italian) of St. Dominic in the church of San Domenico, Bologna, where he made the canopy and most of the freestanding figures (1469-94). His masterpiece is the passionately dramatic lamentation over the dead Christ (six figures; 1463, Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna). Another terra-cotta sculpture group of the Madonna and saints (1478) is above the main entrance of the Palazzo Comunale in Bologna.