Italian family of artists. Pietro Lombardo and his sons, Tullio Lombardo and Antonio Lombardo, were dominant figures in Venetian sculpture and architecture from c. 1465 until the death of Tullio in 1532. Because Pietro was born in Carona, the place of origin of the Solari, a famous family of stone-carvers, it is assumed that he was a member of that family. For this reason, members of the Lombardi family are sometimes referred to by the name of Solari, although only Antonio’s sons used the name themselves. Pietro transformed Tuscan Renaissance prototypes into a Venetian style . . . The typical features of this style, a simple, planar architecture covered with beautifully carved low-relief ornament, were so widely imitated that the designation Lombardesque was coined to characterize it as a Venetian phenomenon of the late 15th century and the early 16th.
Sarah Blake McHam