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This figure, on whose base the sculptor has signed his name, belonged to the most important funerary monument of the High Renaissance in Venice, that of Doge Andrea Vendramin (died 1478).
The Monument of Andrea Vendramin, was erected in Santa Maria dei Servi by Pietro Lombardo and his son Tullio. It was dismantled by Napoleon in 1810 and re-erected in 1816 in Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In 1819 the nude figures Adam and Eve (known only in a copy), originally in the lower niches, were transferred to the Palazzo Vendramin.
Tullio's Adam is clearly classicised, like the architectural framework of the tomb, which is derived from the Roman triumphal arch. The figure combines aspects of antique statues of Antinous and Bacchus, interpreted with an almost Attic simplicity. But the decorated tree trunk, the eloquent hands, and the meaningful glance are refinements on the antique. Remarkable for the purity of its marble and the smoothness of its carving, Adam was the first monumental classical nude to be carved since antiquity.
Tullio is the first Venetian artist to absorb himself in Classical style and imagery, he is known to have restored antiquities and perhaps he collected them. The black marble of Adam's original niche would have accentuated the nude's stark whiteness, shocking in the context of Venetian tradition. The statue reveals a basic unfamiliarity with the human body and its proportions but still manages to seem convincing. It is an early Venetian example of the sensuous nude, which appears in early Cinquecento Venetian painting with Giorgione and Titian.
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