such diligence and labour should not be
accompanied by good design, and that it should lack that perfection,
invention, grace, and good style which any work of our own day would
possess, even were it executed at much less cost and with less
difficulty. Yet it must have excited no small admiration among the
men of the time, who had only been accustomed to see the rudest
productions. It was finished in the year 1320, as appears in certain
lines which run round the pulpit and read thus:

"Laudo Deum verum, per quem sunt optima rerum
Qui dedit has puras homini formate figuras;
Hoc opus, his annis Domini sculpsere Johannis
Arte manus sole quandam, natique Nicole.
Cursis undenis tercentum milleque plenis."

There are thirteen other lines, which I do not write here, because I
do not wish to weary the reader, and because these are sufficient to
show not only that the pulpit is by the hand of Giovanni, but that
the men of that time were alike in their shortcomings. A Madonna
between St John the Baptist and another saint may be seen over the
principal of the door of the Duomo; it is in marble, and by the hand
of Giovanni, and the figure kneeling at her feet is said to be Piero
Gambacorti, the warden. However this may be, the following words are
cut in the pedestal, on which the image of Our Lady stands:

"Sub Petri cura haec pia fuit scutpta figura
Nicoli nato sculptore Johanne vocato."

Moreover there is another marble Madonna, by Giovanni, over the side
door, which is opposite the campanile, while on one side of her kneel
a lady and two children, representing Pisa, and on the other side the
Emperor Henry. On the base are these words:

Ave gratia plena, Dominus teum,

and then--

Nobilis arte manus sculpsit Johannes Pisanus
Sculpsit sub Burgundio Tadi benigno.

And about the base of Pisa:

Virginis ancilla sum Pisa quieta sub illa,

and about the base of Henry:

Imperat Henricus qui Cliristo fertur amicus.

In the old Pieve at Prato, beneath the altar of the principal chapel,
was preserved for many years the girdle of Our Lady, which Michele da
Prato had brought back with him from the Holy Land, and had deposited
it with Uberto, provost of the church, who laid it in the said place,
where it was always held in great veneration. In the year 1312 an
attempt to steal it was made by a native of Prato, a man of a most
evil life, another