art in venice, 1400–1600 781
(of Pietro (c.1435–1515) and his sons tullio (c.1455–1532) and Antonio
(c.1458–c.1516)) or Antonio rizzo. Modern catalogues of works attributed
to Giovanni and Bartolomeo Buon, Antonio rizzo, or to Pietro Lombardo
and his sons tullio and Antonio include imitations of the style practiced
by the leading artist and owner of the workshop by other professional but
less gifted collaborators chosen ad hoc. these stonecarvers followed in
most cases what they considered to be the style of the capobottega [work-
shop head]. they tried to achieve at least a superficial similarity with the
works of the capobottega. the result was what is often called Werkstattstil
[workshop style].
the attribution of ornamental elements also requires logically com-
prehensible arguments. this applies especially to ornamental vegeta-
tion. Pietro and especially tullio Lombardo were well known for their
mastery of ornamentation all’antica, abilities that Pomponius Gauricus
(1504) especially pointed out in respect to tullio. Later, the architect
Sebastiano Serlio (in his IV Book, Venice, 1537) subsumed under the term
“ornament”―which today has quite different associations—tasks such as
chimneys, doors, iron grates, façade paintings, floors, and ceiling decora-
tions that could be designed not only by specialists, among them sculptors
and painters, but also personally by the architects overseeing the building.
As parts of a functional and aesthetic whole—a whole in which build-
ings, pictures, and sculptures are almost always privileged and subject to
individual examination—the above-named tasks threaten to escape the
view of academic architectural history. the consequences for their pres-
ervation and care are evident. in 1537, Serlio demanded that architects at
least guide and, where necessary, intervene as moderators in those cases
where they could not personally design the building’s ornamentation.
Here, the protection of façades from the liberties that the majority of the
painters took was a matter of concern as well. the painting of the façade
of the Palace d’Anna on the canal Grande (1531–32) by Giovanni Antonio
Pordenone (1484–1539) was immediately a tourist attraction as well as a
triumph of the painter in his transformation of the architect’s work.
in the 15th century, wooden statues were always painted, at least par-
tially, as were stone statues. the separation of the guilds from each other
gave painters the possibility to transform and refine sculpted works. the
expectation that this would happen could influence the quality of the
detailing and finishing of the outer surfaces by the sculptors or wood-
carvers. How great the differences between painted (and only thus, real-
istic) sculptures and those sculptures that were in a state of preparation
for painting is evidenced by the especially well-preserved sarcophagus of