The great Venetian sculptors of the High Renaissance, led by Tullio Lombardo (c. 1455–1532), explored a poetic and nostalgic approach to classical antiquity in their work. Their expression shares much with Mantegna, Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian in these painters’ imaginative evocations of ancient history, mythology, philosophy, and poetry. 
Featuring a range of Tullio’s work, including his sensuous and dramatic double-portrait reliefs, this book introduces the romantic qualities and beautiful craftsmanship of the sculptor and his closest followers, including his brother Antonio Lombardo, Simone Bianco, Antonio Minello, and Giammaria Mosca. Essays examine Tullio’s innovations and the Venetian cultural setting where he developed them in dialogue with the northern Italian masters of Renaissance painting. Twelve works, carefully selected from this milieu, exemplify the creative approach and influence of Tullio and the Lombardo workshop.

Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture

Arts & Photography

Luchs, Alison

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

This volume of Facture, a biennial journal that presents the latest conservation research on works of art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, focuses exclusively on conservation treatment, technical art history, and scientific research related to masterpieces by the beloved French artist Edgar Degas (1834–1917). The National Gallery’s extraordinary collection of sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by Degas, including an incomparable group of his wax sculptures—among them his iconic Little Dancer Aged Fourteen—allows the institution to contribute significantly to understanding the artist’s methods and intentions. This volume features discussions of the notion of “finish” in Degas’s paintings, the complex makeup of his wax sculptures, the casting of posthumous bronzes, his innovative use of multiple layers of pastel and fixative in a late work on paper, and even a sonnet that Degas wrote to his “little dancer.”

Facture: Conservation, Science, Art History: Volume 3: Degas

Barbour, Daphne S.

Jones, Kimberly

Kendall, Richard

Hoenigswald, Ann

Sturman, Shelley G.

Berrie, Barbara H.

Delaney, John K.

Dooley, Kathryn A.

Facini, Michelle

Lomax, Suzanne Quillen

Schenck, Kimberly

Palmer, Michael

National Gallery Washington

The National Gallery's distinguished collection of decorative arts includes more than eighty works, such as Abbot Suger's jeweled sardonyx cup from the royal abbey of St. Denis, a Limoges reliquary, and a Mosan lion aquamanile. The extensive collection of Renaissance ceramics is primarily Italian maiolica but also represents rare Medici porcelain and "Saint-Porchaire" ware.

Western Decorative Arts, Part I: Medieval, Renaissance, and Historicizing Styles Including Metalwork, Enamels, and Ceramics (National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogues)

Distelberger, Rudolf

Verdier, Philippe

Wilson, Timothy H.

Princeton University Press

This book focuses on Tullio Lombardo's 'double-portrait', those mysterious noble reliefs containing busts of young couples whose meaning has long eluded scholars. Positing their significance as a new genre for private delectation created by a sculptor best known for public, and primarily funerary, monuments, Alison Luchs sets these and related works against the striking rarity of independent portrait sculpture in Venice before the mid-sixteenth century. Among other issues that Luchs considers are Venetian receptivity to the particularly expressive quality of this genre and the style as it develops in relation to contemporary Venetian painting, especially that of Giorgione and his followers. She concludes this richly illustrated study by suggesting that Tullio's extraordinary double-portrait sculpture played a critical role in preparing a Venetian audience for the acceptance of the individualised portrait bust.

Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Italy, 1490–1530

Cambridge University Press

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Books by Luchs, Alison