View of the right portal

Sansovino made it clear that Tullio was responsible for the two reliefs of St Mark Baptizing Anianus and St Mark Healing Anianus flanking the portals on the façade of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, Venice, which must have been sculpted in 1489–90 when his father Pietro designed the façade's lower portion. They are the earliest relief sculptures definitely by Tullio and establish certain principles that can be traced in his later narrative reliefs. The figures are large and are arranged in an isocephalic frieze. They stand crowded together on a projecting ledge before an architectural setting shown in perspective that creates the unprecedented illusion of receding architectural space on a real architectural façade. The reliefs combine a classicism of form and organization that Tullio might have learnt from such triumphal arch reliefs as the Adlocution of Hadrian (Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome) with the theatrical immediacy of tableaux vivants. The vaulted architecture shown in perspective may be derived ultimately from Bramante's Santa Maria presso San Satiro, Milan.