Pulpit of Sant' Andrea, Pistoia, marble pulpit in the church of Sant'Andrea, Pistoia, Italy

The Pulpit of Sant'Andrea is a hexagonal marble pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, raised on porphyry columns with carved capitals. Pointed arches support a parapet crowded with relief figures, and at the bases crouch a lion and a crouching man. An inscription runs between the arches and parapets, naming canon Arnoldus and treasurers Andrea Vitelli and Tino di Vitale.

Commissioned by Canon Arnoldus and overseen by treasurers Andrea Vitelli and Tino di Vitale, the pulpit was begun in 1298 and finished in 1301, as its Latin inscription records; Vasari dates the commission to 1297. Giovanni Pisano was nearly fifty and had assisted his father Nicola on the Pisa Baptistery and Siena pulpits. The inscription praises him for surpassing his father in skill.

The five parapets carry crowded reliefs of the Life of Christ: the Annunciation and Nativity with midwives bathing the infant, the Dream and Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion and the Last Judgement. Full-length Sibyls and Prophets stand on the capitals, and one Sibyl turns abruptly toward the angel inspiring her.

The pulpit stands in the pieve of Sant'Andrea in Pistoia, raised on its columns above the patterned floor, so the reliefs are best read from below and from the side. The original stairway that gave access to the pulpit has been removed, so visitors see it only from floor level. The eagle lectern rises above the parapet at the corner between the Massacre of the Innocents and the Crucifixion.

The eagle lectern above the parapet, symbol of John the Evangelist, is a copy; the original is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The pulpit's other lectern is kept at the Bode Museum in Berlin. Beneath the eagle, the symbols of the other three Evangelists are carved: the lion, the winged man and the ox.