Restoration For Early Renaissance Pulpit Will Get Big-Screen Treatment

THE ART NEWSPAPER
By Nancy Kenney

A pulpit carved by Giovanni Pisano is to be restored in Pistoia, Italy Photo: Nicolò Begliomini; courtesy of Friends of Florence

Italian cultural officials have joined forces with the University of Florence and a non-profit group to rescue a renowned pulpit in the Church of Sant’Andrea in Pistoia whose carved marble elements are crumbling. The 1301 carved pulpit, created by Giovanni Pisano, will undergo a two-year intensive monitoring programme followed by conservation financed by €230,000 raised by the Washington, DC-based non-profit, Friends of Florence. The first step will be to attach probes to the pulpit that route information to a computer to establish whether the overall structure is moving, “inch by inch”, says Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, the group’s president. [More]