Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice: 1490-1530.

Alison Luchs. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 209 illus. + xiv + 210 pp. $70. ISBN: 0-521-47075-7.

Independent portrait sculpture emerged as a genre in Venice almost a century after its birth in Quattrocento Florence. Yet Venice was not devoid of its own distinctive portrait conventions, though they have been overshadowed by the better-known and more widely-studied portrait bust tradition that prospered in Tuscany. Alison Luchs's book confronts this critical imbalance by offering a stimulating discussion of the intellectual and formal characteristics of an uniquely Venetian type of ideal portraiture. It began with Tullio Lombardo at the turn of the sixteenth century, and Luchs focuses her study on two enigmatic reliefs by the sculptor, one of which is in the Ca' d'Oro, Venice, and the other in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The works are bust-length double portraits, each featuring a male and female subject. The sculptural type is unprecedented in Venice, or elsewhere, and the reliefs' meanings and artistic repercussions have never been fully discerned.

The success of Luchs's study ultimately derives from her concerted effort to position her analysis within the widest possible cultural context. The first chapter offers an informative overview of the Venetian artistic and social milieu c. 1490-1530, and is followed by a review of Tullio's artistic career. These relatively lengthy chapters are clear and insightful, and Luchs synthesizes much information in providing a useful introduction to this period of Venetian art. Indeed, the extensive notes in these chapters and throughout the book are remarkable for their breadth and thoroughness. Luchs takes pains to define the genre and to distinguish its distinctively Venetian characteristics from those of other artistic centers. Her discussion of Tullio's career furthermore lays the groundwork for situating the portrait reliefs within his oeuvre and allows the tentative dating of the pieces that follow.

Specialists, in fact, may want to cut to the chase where chapters three and four deal directly with the reliefs under question. Luchs wisely offers no simple solution to resolving the ambiguities of the reliefs. She fully recognizes the complexities of previous interpretations and offers reasoned though qualified hypotheses regarding issues such as patronage, sources, and meaning. The author argues that the Ca' d'Oro relief (c. 1490-95) may be understood as "[an] emotionally engaging improvisation on an antique theme" (65), while the Vienna relief (c. 1505-10) ostensibly shows Bacchus and Ariadne - or, alternately, Bacchus and Ceres. Most important for both reliefs is that however much they refer to classical subjects, their depictions remain remarkably contemporary because they are essentially ideal portraits. Their overt subject is that of love (or lovers) with visual and thematic references to the classical past (both mythical and actual) as well as the present. Tullio's reliefs may thus be fairly read as both poesie and a sculptor's response to the paragone. In this regard, Luchs does wall to consider similar manifestations of these themes in contemporary painting, particularly works by Giorgione. Luchs's discussion is purposely suggestive and nuanced rather than definitive. Indeed, like Giorgione's famous (and so-called) Tempesta, it is the ambivalence between the works' evocative portrayals and their enigmatic, multi-layered subjects that make them such compelling works of art. In the end, no single interpretation ever seems wholly adequate but each reveals another facet of the gem.

In the final three chapters, Luchs reviews various types of portrait sculpture influenced by Tullio Lombardo and his portrait reliefs. These discussions read like extended catalogue entries of works that collectively help document the extent of Tullio's achievement. Many obscure sculptures are evaluated, some in private collections, and the author and publishers are to be commended for providing such extensive illustrations. Not until the middle of the sixteenth century can Venice lay claim to a tradition in sculpture of independent portraiture, and the city's finest exponent in the genre was Alessandro Vittoria, originally from Trent. But Luchs argues persuasively that the theoretical and artistic roots of these portraits lie deep within Venetian culture and are decisively marked with the contributions of Tullio Lombardo.

A. VICTOR COONIN Rhodes College