Column, marble, with spiral bands of acanthus foliage, from monument of Emperor Henry VII in the Duomo at Pisa, by Tino di Camaino, Italy (Pisa), about 1315

Marble pillar with spiral bands of acanthus foliage in which putti, some of them winged, are playing.

Purchased in Florence (vendor not recorded with 74-1882). The purchase of these columns is recorded in a letter from Mr J.C. Robinson to The Times of 1st October 1883,: "These were obtained in 1881 from Pisa, and they were said by the vendor to have formed portions of a monument, originally extant in the cathedral...From a careful consideration of these shafts, and judging from various indications, I come to the conclusion that they were portions of the supporting columns of a baldachino or altar canopy".

Historical significance: Henry VII (1274/5– 24 Aug 1313) was Count of Luxembourg before being elected King of Germany in 1308. In October 1310 he embarked on an Italian campaign with the aim of re-establishing imperial power and the peace that had been disrupted by fighting between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. After being crowned King of Lombardy in Milan in January 1311 he used force to procure his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in S Giovanni in Laterano in Rome the following year. He died in a campaign against King Robert of Naples (reg 1309–43) and was buried in Pisa Cathedral. There are some important works of art associated with Henry’s Italian campaign.

Around 1315 the Pisans commissioned Tino di Camaino to erect a marble tomb for the Emperor in the main apse of Pisa Cathedral. Various attempts have been made to reconstruct the arrangement of the tomb, however the precise reconstruction of this now fragmentary monument remains uncertain. The sarcophagus, with the Twelve Apostles on its long side, was placed in a niche from which angels held back curtains. The effigy of the deceased lay on the sarcophagus; above must have been the enthroned figure of the Emperor surrounded by his counsellors.

Two other pillars from the same set, one broken, are in the Campo Santo at Pisa; one in the Museo dell' Opera del Duomo and the other in a store room. They were found by Pope-Hennessy to be numbers 319 and 320 in the inventory of the contents of the Campo Santo (Ministero del Educazione Nazionale, Catalogo delle cose d'arte e di antichita d'Italia.Papini, Pisa, ii, Rome, 1932, pp.165-6). Pope-Hennessy initially found no indication of the nature or identity of the complex to which these two pillars belong, however in Italian Gothic Sculpture 1985, he accepts Naoki Dan's suggestion that they formed part of the monument of the Emperor Henry VII by Tino di Camaino. Pope-Hennessy favours a reconstruction of the monument proposed by Gert Kreytenberg in "Das Grabmal von Kaiser Heinrich VII in Pisa" in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz over that proposed by Naoki Dan in his "Ricostruzione della tomba di Arrigo VII di Tino di Camaino".

An article in the Burlington Magazine also by Kreytenberg relates fragments of an altar of St Bartolomew in Pisa Cathedral to a sculptural group of counsellors surrounding the Emperor Henry VII, which once formed part of the emperor's monument. The altar fragment is by Tino di Camaino and Kreytenberg suggests that if not actually sculpted by Tino, the group of counsellors were probably designed by him.

The columns (also V&A no. 74-1882) were attributed to the school of Giovanni Pisano by Maclagan and Longhurst. In the Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1960, Pope-Hennessy attributed them to the workshop of Giovanni di Balduccio. Naoki Dan in "Tino di Camaino: Le colonne tortili di Pisa e di Londra" in Prospettiva xx (Januray 1980 p.16-26) attributes the columns to Tino di Camaino on the basis of similarity to other work by him. In Italian Gothic Sculpture third edition, Pope-Hennessy accepts Naoki's Tino attribution.

The city of Pisa commissioned the monument to the emperor Henry VII (from which the present columns are thought to originate) from Tino di Camaino in 1315.

This and the companion pillar (V&A Mus. No. 74-1882), together with two further pillars now in the Campo Santo at Pisa, formed part of the monument of the Empror Henry VII (d. 1313) in the Duomo at Pisa. In about 1315 the Pisans commissioned Tino di Camaino to erect a marble monument for the Emperor in the main apse of Pisa Cathedral. The exact arrangement of the monument is uncertain. The sarcophagus, with the Twelve Apostles on its long side, was placed in a niche from which angels held back curtains. An effigy of Henry lay on the sarcophagus; above must have been the enthroned figure of the Emperor surrounded by his counsellors. The pillars probably created the niche and supported the platform for the sarcophagus above.

73-1882