Supino in Pisa: the photography between «Archivio Storico dell'Arte», the pulpit of Giovanni and the civic Museum

Abstract

In Pisa, between 1891 and 1896, Supino decidedly took the path of historical-artistic research and of heritage protection: already with his first essay Il Pergamo di Giovanni Pisano nel Duomo di Pisa, published in 1892 on «Archivio Storico dell’Arte», intervenes strongly in the debate on the recomposition of the pulpit based on the wooden model of Giuseppe Fontana. This essay is analyzed here in particular, also through a letter from Supino to the editor of the magazine Domenico Gnoli, in his photographic apparatus: origin, construction, elaboration, function of an instrument that for Supino is already of study, documentation, argumentation. The photographs of Fontana's wooden model and the sculptures of the pulpit are then "followed" by the exhibition of the pieces in the Civic Museum opened in 1893 by Supino, through his essay Giovanni Pisano of 1895 also in «Archivio Storico dell'Arte», up to the book Arte Pisana published by Alinari in 1904.