Tullio Lombardo's Ca' d'Oro Relief: A Self-Portrait with the Artist's Wife?

Abstract

Francesco Colonna based a woodcut illustration for his Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499, showing the tomb monument of a bridal couple, on the double-portrait relief by Tullio Lombardo now at the Ca' d'Oro, Venice. The name Colonna chose for the bridegroom, Sertullius, raises the possibility that the subject of the Ca' d'Oro relief is also “Ser Tullius,” that is, Tullio Lombardo, and his wife. Further support for this suggestion comes from the relief's similarity to the self-portrait engraving of Israhel van Meckenem with his wife; from the form of the inscription on Tullio's relief; and from connections with other contemporary North Italian portraits of artists and humanists. The relief's purpose may have been bridal, commemorative, or both.

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Notes on contributors

Alison Lucks

Alison Luchs is Assistant Curator of Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art. Her Johns Hopkins University doctoral dissertation, “Cestello: A Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance,” was published in the Garland series of Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts in 1977, and she has contributed articles to the Burlington Magazine, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, and Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz [National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 20565].