The pulpit, also called ambo, is a raised structure from which the Word of God is proclaimed through the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. Since it is the place where Christ’s Resurrection is announced, its form often recalls the tomb which was left empty by the risen Lord. The ambo in Siena Cathedral was commissioned in 1265 to the great sculptor Nicola Pisano, who finished it before the end of 1268, with the collaboration of his son Giovanni, the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio, and two workshop assistants named Donato and Lapo. The iconographical program, which is quite complex and rich in symbolical meaning, was composed, as was almost always the case for religious works, by illustrious theologians with a profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.

The ambo consists of an octagonal tribune, on the outside faces of which are magnificent marble reliefs that retrace the story of Jesus and Redemption through six episodes: the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Slaughter of the Innocents, the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment. In this way, the faithful, gathered in front of the ambo to listen to the Word of God, had before their eyes the content of that Word translated into visible form and charged with extraordinary three-dimensionality. The intermediate part presents a sequence of trefoil arches whose pendentives hold figures of prophets . . .