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Campagna received the two most important Venetian sculptural commissions of the late 16th century, for the high altars of Il Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore. These altars represent Campagna's first known attempt at bronze statuary and include the first monumental bronze figures cast in Venice since those for the Zen Chapel in San Marco (1504-22).
In the cases of the high altars, Campagna was called upon to design a new kind of altar, unprecedented in Venice, to meet the requirements of Counter-Reformation architecture. Beyond that, both churches were projects by Palladio, with whose ideas Campagna had an evident sympathy. Palladio intended each church to have a free-standing altar, to be seen in the round. The altar of the Redentore was the earlier of the two, probably conceived in 1589 and finished the following year.
At the Redentore, Campagna created a variation on the medieval meditation on the Crucifixion, with St Mark and St Francis flanking the cross. Campagna later described the Crucifixion as 'famosissimo', and its combination of pathos and beauty must have excited admiration at the time. The sensuous treatment of the nude male figure is inspired by Donatello's bronze Christ in Il Santo in Padua. The poses of the two saints (originally placed nearer to the cross) complement its sinuous contrapposto. The St Mark's dynamic gesture and expressive features have the proto-Baroque style of many of Campagna's later figures.
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