The Preaching of the Baptist group (Saint John the Baptist preaching to a Pharisee and a Levite) consists of three larger-than-life bronze statues, created between 1506 and 1511 by Giovan Francesco Rustici to adorn the northern entrance of the Baptistery. The work was part of the sixteenth-century sculptural cycle that decorated the three entrances to the building and was installed to replace an earlier fourteenth-century marble group of the same subject by Tino di Camaino. Since 2006, the group has been housed in the Museum, and in 2015 it was reunited with the North Door in the so-called Sala del Paradiso. The scene represents the episode, as recounted in the Gospels, in which John the Baptist is questioned by a group of priests and Levites asking if he is the Messiah awaited by the people. John replies—raising a finger toward the sky, as seen in the sculpture—that he is merely the forerunner of Jesus Christ. The bases on which the figures stand bear elegant inscriptions in the Hebrew alphabet, quoting the dialogue from the Gospel passage that serves as the iconographic source. The monumental bronze figures, rendered with extraordinary naturalism, express the varying emotions of this encounter, explored by Rustici with remarkable depth: the Pharisee’s suspicion, on the left; the Baptist’s resolve, at the center; and the Levite’s doubt, on the right. The acute physical and psychological characterization of the figures reflects the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, who was in Florence at the time and a close friend of Rustici. According to Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo even assisted in modeling the sculptures.