La Madonna fantasma. Un marmo ritrovato tra Nicola Pisano e la nuova scuola senese
Maria Falcone
The article is dedicated to a Virgin with the Child in marble by Nicola Pisano’s school. This sculpture, documented since 1903 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena and published for the first time in 1984, disappared after 1941. Even if it was declared stolen in 2011 in Sienese scholarly literature, one year later it was
published as an unknown sculpture by a follower of Giovanni Pisano, part of the permanent collection of
the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa. Comparing the catalogues of the Mostra della scultura pisana
del Trecento (1946, 1947) it is possible to demonstrate that the “ghost Madonna” had been loaned by Enzo Carli, then director of the Pinacoteca of Siena, on occasion of that exhibition in Pisa at the end of World War II, and subsequently remained in that town, forgotten and unrecognized.