The Chapel of St. Anthony at the Santo and the Development of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture.

Although the shrine of St. Anthony in the church of the Santo in Padua has been a thriving center of Christian pilgrimage ever since the high middle ages, the sixteenth-century decoration of the saint's burial chapel has never become commensurately famous as a work of art. But this relative obscurity is undeserved, considering that the prime element of the decoration consists of a highly ambitious series of nine large-scale marble reliefs by several of the leading figures in Venetian Cinquecento sculpture, including Tullio and Antonio Lombardo, Jacopo Sansovino, Danese Cattaneo and Girolamo Campagna. Perhaps modern aesthetic sensibilities are more finely attuned to painting than to sculpture; certainly, the ensemble would certainly be better known if it happened to comprise works by Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Perhaps, too, the daily throng of pilgrims around St. Anthony's shrine has tended to deter art-lovers from devoting fuller attention to the surrounding sculptures. But whatever the reason, it is high time that the importance of the chapel in the history of Italian Renaissance sculpture was given its due; and the appearance of the first full-length scholarly study of the chapel and its decoration is accordingly particularly to be welcomed.

The greater part of McHam's text consists of a detailed reconstruction of the history of the sculptural decoration, from its inception in the late 1490s to its final completion, after many vicissitudes, almost a century later. Her account is based on a vast corpus of documents assembled by the late Antonio Sartori, archivist at the Santo, and published posthumously, without commentary, in 1976. McHam is thereby able to clarify the previously confused sequence of events, whereby a decorative project that was originally supposed to be completed within a decade became subject to constant interruption and delay - as a result variously of war, of an inadequate fund of local talent, of an inadequate commitment to the project by several of the leading personalities, and of the inherent practical difficulties caused by the choice of the medium of sculpture. The author's chronological account is complemented by careful and enlightening analyses of the composition and iconography of the reliefs. Particularly revealing about the priorities of the religious authorities at the Santo is the fact that eight of the nine reliefs represent miracles performed by the saint, usually involving healing. In other words, the decision to emphasize Anthony's powers as a thaumaturge - highly relevant in the context of a shrine visited by pilgrims in urgent need of practical succour - left no room for the usually very popular Preaching to the Fishes, or the Sermon in the Nut-tree, or even the Miracle of the Ass.

McHam's most important conclusion - already advanced by her in an essay on the chapel decoration published in Italian in 1984 - is that the iconographical program was combined from the beginning with an equally comprehensive overall design by Tullio Lombardo, embracing the architecture of the chapel as well as the series of reliefs. This conclusion, which was simultaneously reached by one or two other scholars in the late 1970s and early '80s, had been treated with scepticism by some critics, most notably by the late John Pope-Hennessy, who was unwilling to discard a traditional attribution of the design to the bronze sculptor Andrea Riccio. For me, however, McHam is completely convincing in the case she makes for Tullio. The implications for our appreciation of Tullio's historical importance, both as a sculptor and as an architect, are considerable, and although the scope of McHam's book prevents her from exploring them in full, she at least outlines them in her conclusion. Similarly, although the significance of the St. Anthony reliefs in a wider art-historical context is adumbrated rather than fully developed, the thoroughness with which the author has investigated so central a monument means that she has in any case succeeded in placing the study of Venetian Renaissance sculpture on a new footing.

PETER HUMFREY University of St. Andrews