LOMBARDO, Pietro

Lombardo (or Lombardi), family of Italian artists, the leading Venetian sculptors of their period: Pietro and his sons Tullio and Antonio.

Pietro, who came from Lombardy, settled in Venice in about 1467. He was an architect as well as a sculptor, and his church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli (1481-89) on the sculptural decoration of which he was assisted by his sons, has been called the choisest jewel of the Renaissance work in Venice. Of his numerous tombs in Venetian churches, the best known is that of Doge Pietro Mocenigo (SS. Giovanni e Paolo, 1476-81). His style is distinguished by polished mastery of marbleGLOSSARYloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles. cutting and an interest in the antiqueGLOSSARYthe classical age of Greece and Rome began with the Greek migrations of the 2nd millennium BC, and ended in the West in 476 AD with the deposition of the Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus (c. 475 AD); in the East it ended in 529 AD when the Platonic Academy was closed by Justinian (482 - 565 AD)., features that recur in the work of Tullio.

Tullio's most imposing work is the Vendramin monument (1493) in SS. Giovanni e Paolo.

Antonio had less substance as an independent artist. His work included mythological reliefs for Alfonso d'Este.