Fortitude

Medieval syncretism found nothing unseemly in resorting to a protagonist of pagan mythology, Hercules, to symbolise one of the cardinal virtues on which the new catechesis insisted. And classical reminiscence must also have had an effect on the purely figurative level, suggesting the monumental squareness of the figure and the modulated rounding of the volumes. But entirely new, and unexpected, is Pisano's delicate luminism, to which correspond notes of warmer humanity.