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

Sarah Blake McHam presents an interdisciplinary study of one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Western Christendom: the Chapel of St Anthony at the Santo. The chapel is also universally acknowledged as one of the major monuments of Renaissance Italy. Here, for the first time since antiquity, a chapel was decorated with a monumental, narrative sculptural cycle carved entirely from marble. The use of this material on such an unprecedented scale reveals the learned antiquarian milieu in which the redecoration scheme was conceived. Spanning nearly one hundred years, the project engaged the major architects and sculptors of the sixteenth century, including Tullio and Antonio Lombardo, Riccio, Jacopo Sansovino, Falconetto, Cattaneo, Campagna, and Tiziano Aspetti. It effectively serves the modern scholar as a case study in the evolution of Venetian Renaissance sculpture at a critical period in its development, from the late fifteenth to the late sixteenth century.