LOMBARDI, FAMILY. - A numerous dynasty of architects and sculptors, originally from the Canton of Ticino, whose surname Solari was almost always replaced by the generic one of Lombardo or L. They had Venice as their greatest center of activity, but their taste, eminently decorative, both in building and in sculpture, spread, during the last decades of the fifteenth century and the first of the following century, throughout the Veneto, in Lombardy, in Ferrara and in the Romagne, with an ensemble of artisanal qualities that recalls the phenomenon of the Cosmati (v.), in the Lazio region.
The most remarkable of the L., for originality of invention and executive skill, was PIETRO di Martino, b. at Carona,
(phot. Alinari)
LOMBARDI, FAMILY. - Facciata della chiesa dei Miracoli, opera di Pietro L. - Venice.
on Lake Lugano, around 1435, and died in Venice in June 1515. Having absorbed certain elegances of contemporary Florentine sculpture, he began his activity as a sculptor with the Roselli tomb at the Santo in Padua (1464-67), followed, in Venice, by the more complex and ornate tombs of certain doges, in the churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, dei Frari, etc., which remain typical of a flourishing and graceful tendency, called "lombardesque," certainly not deeply icastic or structural. His serene genius expressed itself better in the architectural sphere, with works exceedingly significant of that process of classical updating which Venetian Gothic building underwent, without renouncing its original, Oriental polychromies. And his masterpiece in this field is the church of S. Maria dei Miracoli (1481-89), where the use of multi-colored marble revetments, of oculi, discs, pilasters and friezes is coupled with a clear and simple functionality of linear structures. Pietro L.'s most prolific and faithful collaborators were his sons TULLIO (b. around 1455 and d. in Venice on 17 Nov. 1532) and ANTONIO (b. ca. 1458 and d. perhaps in Ferrara in 1516). The former produced numerous works in the Veneto and in Mantua, among which, more than the relief of St. Anthony and the heart of the avaro in the Arca del Santo, in Padua, and the Bacchus and Ariadne of the Estense Museum in Vienna, there emerges, for the composure of line and elegiac abandon, the funerary statue of the young warrior Guidarello Guidarelli in the Museo civico of Ravenna. Antonio left, among other things, the relief with a Miracle of St. Anthony in the Arca del Santo, in Padua, which by purity of forms seems to anticipate neo-classical modules (1505), and carried on a luxuriant activity in Ferrara, from 1506 to 1516, around the famous "camerini d'alabastro" of Duke Alfonso I, in the Castello Estense, with opulent sculptural friezes, largely preserved in the Stieglitz Museum in Leningrad (a seated Mars is in the Galleria Estense of Modena). Son of Antonio was GIROLAMO, also called da Ferrara (b. in Ferrara ca. 1504 and d. ca. 1590), who came under the influence of Andrea and Jacopo Sansovino; he worked at first with success for the Sansovinian Libreria and Loggetta in Venice (1532-1540), then, having moved to Loreto in 1543, for that S. Casa, where above all his four statues of prophets are admired. Around 1550 he moved to Recanati and there cast in bronze some of his best works: the ciborium, in the form of a small
Roman temple, for the high altar of the Milanese Duomo, the tabernacle of the cathedral of Fermo and the reliefs of the doors for the S. Casa of Loreto, in which his son ANTONIO collaborated (b. ca. 1550 and d. in 1610). Appreciable works in marble were executed, also at Loreto, with austere Sansovinian taste, by Girolamo's brothers as well, AURELIO (b. in Venice in 1501 and d. in Recanati on 9 Sept. 1563), and LUDOVICO (b. ca. 1507 and d. in 1575).