La scala del campanile di San Nicola a Pisa nelle Vite di Giorgio Vasari

Pisa, the church of St. Nicholas: the fourteenth-century bell tower, attributed to Nicola Pisano by Giorgio Vasari. Inside, a (pseudo-archetypical) helical staircase with columns leads to the top. According to Vasari's Lives, the lumaca by Donato Bramante in the Cortile del Belvedere is the finest copy of Nicola's architecture. The same interpretation applies to Antonio da Sangallo's well in Orvieto. The study aims to analyze Vasari's description by highlighting, firstly, the fortune of (repeatedly copied) Pisano's biography through the Lives. So, Vasari's auctoritas is fully accepted, without documentary sources then, curiously, without questioning Vasari's reability. Due to Vasari's auctoritas, no articles have also explored a significant topic: the genesis of Pisano' staircase. It is still an unresolved issue, but an interesting suggestion emerges from Alberti's De re aedificatoria