The study of 16th-century Venetian sculpture was, and still is, badly neglected. Even so eminent an artist as Alessandro Vittoria (Trent, 1525 Venice, 1608) has not yet been accorded the attention his achievements deserve. It is, therefore, with great expectations that one picks up the promisingly important-looking book by Thomas Martin. The book is based on Martin’s doctoral dissertation (Columbia University, 1988) and is divided in two parts: the study itself, in which Martin tries...