PISANO, Tommaso - b. ~1322 ?, d. ~1372 Pisa

Italian sculptor, son of Andrea Pisano and brother of Nino Pisano. He is documented only between 1363 and 1372, but he may have worked earlier with Nino on the tomb of Simone Salterelli in Santa Caterina, Pisa (the reliefs on the sarcophagus lid, 1342-45), and with his father at Orvieto (the two angels of the Porta del Sacro Corporale, 1347-48). No documented work by him survives, although he signed a marble polyptych (undated) in San Francesco, Pisa. Its predella bears reliefs of the Life of Christ; above is a tabernacle crowned by three gables containing the Virgin and Child with Angels, flanked by three tabernacles on either side with statues of saints. The figures show a total lack of knowledge of the organic constructions of the body and reveal Tommaso as a weak sculptor, though not entirely lacking in a decorative sense.

Other marble sculptures attributed to Tommaso include a Virgin and Child (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), a St Peter (Castelfranco di Sotto), and the tomb of Ligo Amannati (d 1359; Camposanto, Pisa). He also made sculpture in wood, including an Angel of the Annunciation (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and a Virgin and Child (San Nicola, Pisa).

Tommaso was among the first sculptors to express a change in the artistic conception of sculpture in Pisa c. 1370 from the noble, distant character of marble sculpture to the more realistic, appealing, and responsive figures in painted wood.