On one side the kings are sleeping, while an angel comes to wake them, pointing out the star.

On the other side they fall at the feet of the Madonna.

It will be gathered even from these bare descriptions that Giovanni introduced a stir of life and movement, and felt his subjects with a poetic intensity, alien to the ideal of Graeco-Roman sculpture.

He effected a fusion between the grand style revived by Niccola and the romantic fervour of the modern imagination.

It was in this way that the tradition handed down by him proved inestimably serviceable to the painters.
The bas-reliefs, however, by no means form the chief attraction of this pulpit.