Transdisciplinary Conservation of Sant’Andrea Pulpit in Pistoia (Italy): The Structural Perspective

Cultural Heritage structures are key elements of societies’ cultural identity and strategic assets in modern economies. Their conservation requires the collaboration of a wide range of specialized professionals from different technical fields. Statues or other artifacts, composed of an assembly of rigid blocks, are a particular subclass of CH structures with invaluable historic and artistic significance, often coupled with an inherent structural fragility. This paper discusses the multidisciplinary approach to the conservation problem of the Pulpit in the church of Sant’Andrea in Pistoia (Italy), a medieval masterwork by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Pisano, with a focus on the structural perspective. The conservation project has involved the use of laser scanning techniques, the implementation of an experimental campaign for material characterization, the design and installation of a structural monitoring system, the dynamic identification of the structure, and it has just completed the stage of design and calibration of a numerical model for safety assessment. The results of the current stage of the conservation project are presented hereafter.