From Donatello to Alessandro Vittoria: 1450-1600: 150 Years of Sculpture in the Republic of Venice

On the lagoon city’s golden age of sculptural innovation

This volume analyzes key moments in the history of sculpture in Venice from the early Renaissance to late Mannerism (mid-15th to early 17th century), highlighting the complexity and richness of the stylistic and iconographic features converging on the city in those years of great renewal. Donatello’s influence reached Venice around 1423, through the arrival of Florentine sculptors such as Pietro di Niccolo Lamberti and Nanni di Bartolo, but the great sculptor’s stay for an entire decade (1443-53) in Padua, a city that was part of the dominions of Venice, was certainly decisive. Around the second half of the 15th century, the sculptors and architects Antonio Rizzo and Pietro Lombardo, together with the latter’s sons–Tullio and Antonio–were protagonists of this period of rebirth. By the mid-16th century the dominant figure was Sansovino, a genuine starchitect of the Republic who disseminated the influence of Mannerism.