Giambattista and Lorenzo Bregno: Venetian Sculpture in the High Renaissance.

Anne Markham Schulz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 88 figs. + 227 pls. + xi + 564 pp. $150.

Anne Markham Schulz is gradually bringing together an impressive corpus of work intended to show the richness of the sculptural tradition of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Venice, a corrective to the deeply entrenched viewing of Venetian Renaissance art almost exclusively in terms of painting. Her latest contribution to this on-going enterprise is a monograph on Giambattista and Lorenzo Bregno, the team of brother sculptors whose career flourished during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. This is the first full-scale treatment of their work, and expands on important findings already published by Schulz in article form.

The sculptors were nephews of the brilliant late fifteenth-century Venetian sculptor Antonio Rizzo, and it is Rizzo who forms the basis of their artistic vision. The elder brother, Giambattista (1467/ 77-1518/20), established the sculptural mode of the team, drawing heavily on both the iconography and figure types of Rizzo. Schulz reasonably hypothesizes that Giambattista was trained in Rizzo's shop, and that he, in turn, trained his brother. Lorenzo (1483/88-1523/24) then goes on to amplify and expand the Rizzo mode by infusing it with new classicistic ideals. The material brought together by Schulz allows one to see Lorenzo Bregno as part of the important -- and still not sufficiently recognized-exploration of new artistic ideals that takes place in the realm of sculpture in Venice at the close of the fifteenth century and during the first twenty years or so of the sixteenth. As Schulz emphasizes, this exploration intersects with the new stylistic directions in painting that take place at the same time. Thanks to the work of Schulz and other scholars, the pre-Sansovino period of Venetian Renaissance sculpture is slowly making its way into mainstream art history.

As a book, the emphasis tends to fall on the apparatus. Somewhat more than half the book is devoted to photographic documentation. A short section of comparative illustrations is followed by an exhaustive coverage of the Bregno production, with multiple views of important sculptures and numerous details that in some cases give the impression that one is actually breathing on the stone. Only those who have experienced the hazards of commissioning photographs in Venice can know the diplomatic and administrative skills, interleaved with tenacity and determination, that such a collection represents. In addition, there is an appendix of documents, for the most part quoted in full, and a catalogue of works in which condition and the history of attributions and dating are scrupulously noted. A problem of usage is posed by the fact that the catalogue is arranged alphabetically according to the city of location, while the photographs are arranged, in two separate runs, according to the development of the careers of Giambattista and Lorenzo. Catalogue numbers have not been appended to the illustrations. The text, in comparison to the apparatus, is rather short. An opening chapter rapidly surveys the development of Venetian sculpture during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, incorporating numerous propositions put forth by the author in other publications, some of which remain controversial and subject to question. This is followed by a crisp treatment of the sculptural careers of the two brothers -- each getting a chapter of his own -- with the focus on issues of style. The concluding chapter widens the discussion to some degree by considering such issues as types of patronage and the question of the accessibility of classical models to Venetian sculptors.

The strength of Schulz' work lies in her close attention to documentary evidence combined with a highly personal system of painstaking taking analysis of Sculptural surface. This combination of skills allows her confidently -- and convincingly -- to place the large and compelling relief of the Visitation in the Duomo at Treviso as a work by Giambattista of ca. 1505, thereby clearing up several centuries of confusion. In other instances, as for example in the discussion of what is probably the Bregno brothers' masterpiece, the Chapel of the Sacrament in Treviso (1504-1514), the attention to detail overwhelms an understanding of the significance of the whole: a chapel that is an important marker in the development of the richly coloristic architectural and sculptural ensemble that originates in the Veneto and eventually makes its way down to Rome. Readers will undoubtedly find their individual ways of using the book. What is not at question is that it enlarges our sense of what art in Renaissance Venice was all about.