Miracle of the Miser's Heart

Tullio Lombardo's relief of the Miracle of the Miser's Heart forms part of an unprecedentedly rich scheme of nine large compositions lining the walls of the Chapel of Sr Anthony' in the left transept of the Basilica di Sant'Antonio, Padua. The entire program was designed to bolster the cult of the city's miracle-working saint at the very moment that Protestants in northern Europe and even some of the professors at Padua's university were attacking traditional notions of saints and relics. Tullio and his collaborators went on the offensive, presenting the saint's miracles as nobly and dramatically as possible. Tullio's work centres around the corpse of a miser who St Anthony, shown preaching at the left, predicted would be found to have lost his heart in his money box - here poised at the back corner of his classically designed bier.

The whole composition reads like a Roman imperial relief, its large figures deeply carved and arranged in a uniform row across the composition. Inspired no doubt by the dramatic intensity of Donatello's bronze reliefs in the same church, Tullio also exploits the vigour and emotional gestures of Hellenistic sculpture, such as the recently discovered Laocoon. Classicism was as adaptable to religious as secular subject matter and could be marshalled to promote traditional values, thus ensuring its widespread adoption and popularity.