Relief with Craftsmen

Among the schools that seem best to anticipate Antelami's plastic robustness combined with an affectionate sense of narrative is the school of Piacenza which, around the middle of the 12th century, interprets the teachings of Nicolò in a Lombard sense. Note the calm naturalism that informs the scene, free from academic formulae but equally from uncultivated crudeness; and the affinities between this relief and those of the Months in Ferrara, much later and of the Antelami school.