780 wolfgang wolters
combined figures on tombs, altars, and on church and palace façades
with “architectonic” elements. Figures and “ornamental” sculptures are,
in very many cases, conceptually integrative parts of an “architectonic”
work―their forms are also contextually determined. Pietro Lombardo’s
church of S. Maria dei Miracoli (since 1481) and Jacopo Sansovino’s
Procurator’s Palace (Libreria) on the Piazzetta (since 1537) are prominent
examples of this.
the regulations of the guilds and the practices of stonemason work-
shops (tagliapietra) enabled the ad hoc employment of craftsmen, among
them experienced masters, to temporarily work in different workshops;
in this way, extensive commissions could be coped with in a manage-
able period of time. Attributions are too often based upon the mistaken
premise that sculptors and painters executed―with their own hands―
every single part of any work that originated in their workshop. in a 1550
letter to the duke of Ferrara, Jacopo Sansovino confessed that he himself
almost never wielded the chisel anymore. At the latest from mid-century
onwards, he delegated the completion of many of his commissions to
Danese cattaneo (c.1509–73), Alessandro Vittoria (1524–1608), Pietro Gra-
zoli da Salo (?), and other, less gifted, sculptors who often signed their
works. the Giganti, erected in 1567 on the eponymous staircase in the
courtyard of the Doge’s Palace, were carried out by seven sculptors under
the direction of Jacopo Sansovino. As early as the 15th century, most con-
tracts lacked a clause stipulating that the director of the workshop was
required to personally execute the commission. thus, in individual cases,
arguments as to the degree of artistry and considerations concerning the
formal peculiarities of a work determine whether or not the employees
were working from their own ideas (designs) within the formal limitations
tolerated by the workshop.
the simultaneous coexistence of individual “styles” was accepted as the
rule in the case of extensive works. not only the Virtues on Bartolomeo
Buon’s Porta della carta of the Doge’s Palace (1438–42), conceptualized
and executed by four different gifted sculptors, but also Pietro Lombar-
do’s rich decoration of S. Maria dei Miracoli, and Sansovino’s commissions
give evidence of this great variety. in the Venice of 1490, as many as 126
Lombard stonemasons were competing with 40 Venetians. the preference
of art history and the art trade for “great” names results in a disinclina-
tion to draw the inevitable conclusions from such documents. thus, too
often, obvious attempts at approximating the workshop director’s style,
executed within the framework of a workshop composed ad hoc and for
a fixed term, were glossed over—and not only in the works of Lombardo