The Pisano family's involvement with the city of Pistoia began in 1273, when Nicola was commissioned by the Operai di San Jacopo to make the altar dedicated to the patron saint (vs31), and ended in 1301 when Giovanni consigned the finished pulpit to the parish of Sant'Andrea (vs25). There is little documentary evidence about this latten work and only one direct reference: the Latin inscription in beautiful Gothic lettering that runs between the small arches and the sides of the pulpit. The writing names the priest Arnoldo who commissioned the work, the treasurers Andrea Vitelli and Tino di Vitale, and Giovanni Pisano, celebrated artist who here, as we read, surpassed his father in mastery.
Acconding to Vasari (vi), Giovanni needed four years to complete the pulpit; knowing that it was finished in 1301 we can deduce that he must have begun the piece in 1297 when, at fifty years of age, he had reached the full development of his remarkable oeuvre. In those years Giovanni lived in Pisa where he was working both on the sounding of the bell-tower's structure and on the ivory piece to be placed on the cathedral's high altar (of which today only the beautiful Madonna remains). Therefore it is likely that he carried out the work on the Pistoian pulpit in his Pisa workshop while he was still collabonating with his father Nicola. This is chronologically the third of the Pisanos' pulpits and the Pistoian piece achieves the greatest results in terms of the harmonious composition of architecture and sculpture. The vast iconographic program illustrates the doctrine of the Redemption according to a welI-defined structure: the lower register is dedicated to Allegories, the middle one to Prophesies, and the upper one to the manifestations of Christ in history, from His Birth to the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment.
The hexagonal parapet is supported by seven columns of which the center one rests on three winged griffins and three outer ones rest on a lion, a lioness and a telamon. Although the latter Is inspired by similar symbolic representations of the Romanesque period, this particular telamon is original in form; it is there of Adam and, before the rearrangement of the pulpit in the 1600s, it held up the parapet dedicated to the Birth of Christ. The middle register that unfolds in the spaces left between the pedentives of the arches Is dedicated to prophesy and portrays the Prophets of the Hebrew world and the Sibyls of the classical world. The upper register divided by the five parapets that form the walls of the pulpit illustrate: (in the .first relief) The Annunciation, The Nativity, The Washing of Christ, The Annunciation to the Shepherds; (in the second) The Dream of the Magi; (in the third) The Slaughter of the Innocents; (in the fourth) The Crucifixion; (in the fifth) The Last Judgement. When it was finished the pulpit was placed in front of the presbytery, while today it is found in the left nave near the second to last column. The parish priest Bartolomeo Cellesi moved the pulpit from its original location in 1 619 because it was no longer used for Mass but only for sermons; it was dismantled. and some of the pieces taken away. The two lecterns were also removed: the one used to read the Gospels, with the Eagle of Saint John that completed the four animal forms, is today in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York while the other lectern used to read the Epistles, with The Pietą of Christ between Two Angels that completed the group of the three Apostles, is now in the State Museums in Berlin.

Giorgio Vasari wrote in the Lives of 1568: And because the Pistoians held in veneration the name of Nicola, Giovanni's father,... they commissioned Giovanni to do a marble pulpit for the Church of Sant'Andrea similar to the one he had made for the cathedral in Siena. Giovanni finished the work in four years; it was divided into five scenes from the Life of Christ, with a Last Judgment made with all Giovanni's great diligence, (...). And because it seemed to him to have made a work of great beauty, as indeed he had, he Hoc opus sculpsit Joannes, qui res non egit inanes, Nicoli natus (...) meliora beatus, queni genuit Pisa, doctum super omnia visa. (From G. Vasari, Le vite dei pił eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architetti, Roma, 1991)

(n.) refers to the number of the file-card
(si.) means see information inside