early Renaissance Italian sculptor famed for his expressionistic use of northern Gothic realism in combination with true compositional principles of Renaissance art. Niccolò takes his name from the tomb (arca in Italian) of St. Dominic in the church of S. Domenico, Bologna, where he made the canopy and most of the freestanding figures (1469–94). His masterpiece is the passionately dramatic lamentation over the dead Christ (six figures; 1463, S. Maria della Vita, Bologna). Another terra-cotta sculpture group of the Madonna and saints (1478) is above the main entrance of the Palazzo Comunale in Bologna.