Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Italy, 1490–1530

This book focuses on Tullio Lombardo's 'double-portrait', those mysterious noble reliefs containing busts of young couples whose meaning has long eluded scholars. Positing their significance as a new genre for private delectation created by a sculptor best known for public, and primarily funerary, monuments, Alison Luchs sets these and related works against the striking rarity of independent portrait sculpture in Venice before the mid-sixteenth century. Among other issues that Luchs considers are Venetian receptivity to the particularly expressive quality of this genre and the style as it develops in relation to contemporary Venetian painting, especially that of Giorgione and his followers. She concludes this richly illustrated study by suggesting that Tullio's extraordinary double-portrait sculpture played a critical role in preparing a Venetian audience for the acceptance of the individualised portrait bust.