made many figures in
marble which were passing good for those times. But among others who
assisted Giovanni in the work of the Vescovado in Arezzo, Agostino and
Agnolo, sculptors and architects of Siena, surpassed in time all the
others, as will be told in the proper place. But returning to Giovanni;
having departed from Orvieto, he came to Florence, in order to see the
fabric of S. Maria del Fiore that Arnolfo was making, and likewise to
see Giotto, of whom he had heard great things spoken abroad; and no
sooner had he arrived in Florence than he was charged by the Wardens of
the said fabric of S. Maria del Fiore to make the Madonna which is over
that door of the church that leads to the Canon's house, between two
little angels; which work was then much praised. Next, he made the
little baptismal font of S. Giovanni, wherein are certain scenes in
half-relief from the life of that Saint. Having then gone to Bologna, he
directed the building of the principal chapel of the Church of S.
Domenico, wherein he was charged by Bishop Teodorigo Borgognoni of
Lucca, a friar of that Order, to make an altar of marble; and in the
same place he afterwards made, in the year 1298, the marble panel
wherein are the Madonna and eight other figures, reasonably good.

In the year 1300, Niccola da Prato, Cardinal Legate of the Pope, being
in Florence in order to accommodate the dissensions of the Florentines,
caused him to make a convent for nuns in Prato, which is called S.
Niccola from his name, and to restore in the same territory the Convent
of S. Domenico, and so too that of Pistoia; in both the one and the
other of which there are still seen the arms of the said Cardinal. And
because the people of Pistoia held in veneration the name of Niccola,
father of Giovanni, by reason of that which he had wrought in that city
with his talent, they caused Giovanni himself to make a pulpit of marble
for the Church of S. Andrea, like to the one which he had made in the
Duomo of Siena; and this he did in order to compete with one which had
been made a little before in the Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista by a
German, who was therefore much praised. Giovanni, then, delivered his
finished in four years, having divided this work into five scenes from
the life of Jesus Christ, and having made therein, besides this, a
Universal Judgment, with the greatest diligence that he knew, in order
to equal or perchance to surpass the one of Orvieto, then so greatly