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In the 1490s Tullio and Antonio Lombardo assumed the major role in sculptural commissions awarded to the family shop. The most important project of this decade was the tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin (Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice), originally in Santa Maria dei Servi in Venice. The design of the tomb and a large part of its figure sculpture are usually credited to Tullio. Following the death of Andrea del Verrocchio, who had provided the first project for the tomb, Tullio began work after 1488 and had almost finished it c. 1493–4.
The tomb is the earliest Venetian Renaissance wall tomb to be so grandly classical. Its architectural structure transforms the pagan triumphal arch type into a Gate of Paradise, before which were originally positioned the nude figures Adam (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Eve (untraced) and the recumbent effigy of the Doge. The 18 figures that once decorated the tomb, more than on any other Venetian funerary monument of the period, have antique prototypes. The figure of Adam, signed by Tullio, is the tomb's masterpiece and serves as a paradigm of Tullio's style in figure sculpture. The idealized male nude type derives from antique statues of Apollo, although its unstable contrapposto, unclassical proportions and abstract description of skin surfaces also suggest the influence of Late Antique ivory sculpture.
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