Inventare un monumento per San Domenico a Bologna: L’Arca di Nicola Pisano e i suoi sostegni. Nuove possibilità sulla sua prima conformazione

As a starting point, the contribution re-examines the scanty written sources available regarding the original appearance of the Arca, seeking to provide a more thorough contextualization. Particular attention is paid to the words of Giovanni Michele Piò (1620), whose dependence on the manuscript Cronaca of Fra Ludovico da Prelormo is recognised by the article. After reviewing the various hypotheses put forward over time, both in Dominican studies and in the field of art history, the contribution highlights the critical issues of the solution, widely accepted in recent decades, involving triplets of acolytes (such as those in Florence and Boston) placed at the corners of the sarcophagus. Conversely, the article argues for the acceptance—albeit with some necessary modifications—of the proposal, first formulated by John Pope-Hennessy in 1951, that the pair of archangels in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the one holding a codex in the Musée du Louvre are pertinent to the Arca. Considering the method of mounting of corner elements in polygonal-chest pulpits, these figures cannot have belonged to the pergamo of San Michele degli Scalzi, as suggested by Andrea Franci in 1998. Finally, based on the indications—some of which minimal—provided by the monument itself and the sculptures that can be attributed to it, the article proposes a new conjectural rendering of the monument's original arrangement, featuring the three archangels—along with a fourth now lost—at the corners, the two supports with friars in the vestments of acolytes flanking the sarcophagus below, and, centrally on each of the major fronts, two additional statues of confreres or possibly angels.