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After 1550 the pace of Sansovino's sculptural activity slackened, as can be seen by the length of time he took to complete his largely autograph marble relief, the Miracle of the Maiden Carilla, for the Chapel of St Anthony in the Basilica di Sant'Antonio (commissioned 1536; installed 1563).
The style of the reliefs in the Chapel of St Anthony was laid down by the Lombardi, but the second of the scenes, the Miracle of the Maiden Carilla, was carved for the chapel by Sansovino. The relief is carved with great authority and confidence - such a figure as the mother kneeling over the drowned girl was beyond the reach of any sixteenth-century Italian sculptor save Michelangelo - and is conceived with an epic nobility that raises it as narrative to the level of the finest Venetian subject paintings.
The relief is the unchallenged masterpiece of High Renaissance relief sculpture in which Michelangelo's influence is identifiable in the muscular figures of the protagonists.
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