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In the third relief, the Presentation, the figures are placed on a realistic stage and decrease proportionally in size towards the back of the scene. They are organized in blocks related to the shapes of the buildings in the background, giving an effect of stability and majesty. The carving is now more refined and the modelling softer, apparent in the cascading folds around the polygonal forms; in some of the faces, such as the two representations of St Anne, one ravaged by age and the other full of prophetic inspiration, the marble appears to be as ductile as wax.
Directly inspired from figures on the Phaedra sarcophagus in the Camposanto, Pisa, are the wizened heads of the expressionistic prophetess Anna and St Elizabeth in the Presentation in the Temple. This scene also contains another fascinating adaptation all'antica, the transformation of a Hellenistic aged Dionysos supported by a satyr into the old priest with an acolyte. (Michelangelo used this general prototype later for his Bacchus.) Nicola adapted to a Christian context the pagan form derived from a Roman copy of a Neo-Attic carved krater in the Composanto. His borrowing also had a civic dimension because the krater was believed to have been given to the city by Augustus, thus alluding to Pisa's origins and alliance to the Ghibellines.
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