A reading hypothesis:
- The bear, or rather she-bear refers to the figure of the mother, an allegory of the Virgin, or in a broader sense of Pisa itself.
- The dragon-snake, is an iconographic representation of evil or of the devil, in this case a threat.
- The ram and bull (Aries and Taurus) are two zodiac signs, representing the time interval between 25 March and 21 April, within which Easter falls.
We can therefore deduce that the Virgin Mary (the bear), or the city of Pisa, is protecting the Easter period (between ram and bull) from the threat of the devil (dragon-snake).
Above, to the right of the entrance door, there is a bas-relief depicting two ships in the act of returning to port, represented by a turreted construction. In the Middle Ages, when the sun reached the Zenith on All Saints' Day, a blade of shadow was projected from the capital to the right of the bas-relief. This phenomenon decreed the end of the navigation period for the Republic of Pisa.
