MARCO ROMANO
Italian sculptor. He is known from a single surviving sculpture, the effigy of St Simeon in San Simeone Grande, Venice. The tomb, commissioned to preserve the relics of the Saint, no longer survives. An inscribed tablet accompanying the effigy records the names of the clerics who commissioned the monument, the sculptor’s name MARCUS ROMANUS and the date 4 February 1317 (NS 1318). The style of the statue in its confident treatment of the supine figure and the summary but convincing delineation of drapery folds points to a sculptor of considerable skill and experience who was outside the mainstream of early 14th-century Venetian sculpture. The expressive head with its prominent cheekbones, furrowed brow and heavy features and the realistic detail of the teeth just showing between strong lips, suggest knowledge of the work of Giovanni Pisano and, in particular, his series of prophets and sibyls for Siena Cathedral. Remarkably progressive in comparison to contemporary Venetian sculpture, St Simon was to provide the starting-point for subsequent tomb effigies in the Veneto: that of the Blessed Oderico da Pordenone (1331) by Filippo de Santi for Santa Maria del Carmine, Udine, is the most significant.