Sebastiano del Piombo

Sebastiano del Piombo

Copy of a self portrait
Born Sebastiano Luciani
c. 1485
Venice, Italy
Died 21 June 1547
Rome, Italy
Nationality Italian
Education Giovanni Bellini
Known for Painting
Notable work Saint John Chrysostom
Pietà
Portrait of Clement VII
Movement High Renaissance
Mannerism

Sebastiano del Piombo (Italian: [sebaˈstjaːno del ˈpjombo]; c. 1485 – 21 June 1547), byname of Sebastiano Luciani, was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance and early Mannerist periods famous as the only major artist of the period to combine the coloring of the Venetian school in which he was trained with the monumental forms of the Roman school.

His nickname derived from the lucrative Papal appointment as Keeper of the Seal (piombo or "lead", as in the metal, means a seal), which he held from 1531. Never a very disciplined or productive painter, his artistic productivity fell still further after this, which commited him to attend on the pope most days, and travel with him. He now painted mostly portraits, and relatively few works of his survive compared to his great contemporaries in Rome. This limited his involvement with the Mannerist style of his later years.

Having achieved success as a lutanist when young, he turned to painting and trained with Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. When he first went to Rome he worked with Raphael and then became one of the few painters to get on well with Michelangelo, who tried to promote his career by encouraging to compete for commissions against Raphael.

He painted portraits and religious subjects in oils, and once he was established avoided the large fresco schemes that took up so much of the time of Raphael and Michelangelo. His subsequent influence was limited by his lack of prominent pupils, compared to Raphael at least, and relatively little dissemination of his works in print copies.

Biography

Detail of fresco in San Pietro in Montorio.

Sebastiano del Piombo belongs to the painting school of his native city, Venice, but was active for a large portion of his career in Rome. At first a musician, chiefly a soloist on the lute, he was in great request among the Venetian nobility. He soon showed a turn for painting, and became a pupil of Giovanni Bellini and afterwards of Giorgione, whose influence is apparent in his works. Some of Sebastiano's works were indeed confused with Giorgione's,[1] i.e. the Salomè of 1510.

His first painting of note was done for the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice, and is so closely modeled on the style of Giorgione that in its author's time it often passed for the work of that master.

It represents Saint John Chrysostom reading aloud at a desk, a grand Magdalene in front, and two other female and three male saints.[1]

Roman works

Towards 1511–1512, del Piombo aided Baldassarre Peruzzi in mythologic themes for lunettes in the Sala di Galatea in the villa now-called the Farnesina. There he would have worked alongside Raphael, and executed some mythology-inspired frescoes.

The Raising of Lazarus (1517-1519)

According to Vasari, Michelangelo befriended Sebastiano and offered pictorial designs for him to develop in paint.

Four pictures for which this is claimed are the Pietà in the church of the Conventuali, Viterbo; the Transfiguration and the Flagellation in the Borgherini Chapel of the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome; and, most celebrated of all, the Raising of Lazarus, now in the National Gallery, London.[2] [3] This grand work - more remarkable for general strength of pictorial perception than for qualities of detailed intellectual or emotional expression - is more than 3.5 by 2.5 meters, with the principal life-size figures transferred from wood to canvas in 1771.

It was painted in 1517-1519 for Giulio de Medici, for the bishop of Narbonne, afterwards Pope Clement VII; and it remained in Narbonne cathedral until purchased by the duke of Orleans early in the eighteenth century, coming to England with the Orleans Collection in 1792. [1]

It has been generally admitted that the design of Michelangelo appears in the figure of Lazarus and of those who are busied about him (two sketches of the Lazarus regarded as Michelangelo's handwork are now in the British Museum;[4] but whether he actually touched the panel, as has often been said, appears more than doubtful, as he left Rome about the time when the picture was commenced.

Raphael's Transfiguration was painted for the same patron and the same destination.

The two works were exhibited together, and some admirers did not scruple to give the preference to Sebastiano.

His Flagellation of Christ, though ordinarily termed a fresco, is, according to Vasari, painted in oil upon the wall. This was a method first practiced by Domenico Veneziano, and afterwards by other artists; but Sebastiano alone succeeded in preventing the blackening of the colours. The design for the figure of Christ in this picture is supposed by many to have been supplied by Michelangelo.

Sebastiano, always a tardy worker, was occupied about six years upon this work, along with its companion the Transfiguration, and the allied figures of saints.[1]

Elevation to office of Piombo

Portrait of a Ladya by Sebastiano del Piombo displayed in the National Gallery, London

After the elevation of Giulio de' Medici to the pontificate as Pope Clement VII in 1523, the office of the piombo (or leaden seal) that is, the office of sealer of briefs of the apostolic chamber became vacant; two painters competed for it, Sebastiano Luciani, hitherto a comparatively poor man, and Giovanni da Udine.

Sebastiano secured the very lucrative appointment in 1531, with the proviso that he should pay out of his emoluments 300 scudi per annum to Giovanni. To do so he became a friar, despite having a wife and two children. The name "del Piombo" came from this office, which required him to accompany the Pope in all his travels. If he had heretofore been slow in paintings he became now supine in a marked degree,[1] according to Vasari, and mostly painted portraits.

One of the few subject-pictures which he executed after taking office was Christ carrying the Cross for the patriarch of Aquileia, also a Madonna with the body of Christ. The former painting is done on stone, a method invented by Sebastiano himself. He likewise painted at times on slate-as in the instance of Christ on the Cross, now in the Berlin gallery, where the slate constitutes the background. In the same method, and also in the same gallery, is the Dead Christ supported by Joseph of Arimathea, with a weeping Magdalene colossal half-length figures.

Andrea Doria, 1520

Late in life Sebastiano had a serious disagreement with Michelangelo with reference to the Florentine's great picture of the Last Judgment. Sebastiano encouraged the pope to insist that this picture should be executed in oil. Michelangelo, determined from the first upon nothing but fresco, tartly replied to his holiness that oil was only fit for women and for sluggards like Friar Sebastian; and the coolness between the two painters lasted almost up to the friar's death. This event, consequent upon violent fever acting rapidly upon a very sanguine temperament, took place in Rome in 1547. Sebastiano directed that his burial, in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, should be conducted without ceremony of priests, friars or lights, and that the cost thus saved should go to the poor.[1] He died at Rome in 1547.

Pupils

Numerous pupils sought training from Sebastiano del Piombo; but, owing to his dilatory and self-indulgent habits, few adapted his style with the exception of Tommaso Laureti. Sebastiano, conscious of his deficiency in the higher sphere of invention, made himself especially celebrated as a portrait painter: the likeness of Andrea Doria, in the Doria Palace, Rome, is one of the most renowned. In the National Gallery, London, are two fine specimens; one canvas represents the friar himself, along with Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici; the other, a portrait of a lady in the character of St Agatha, used to be identified with one of Sebastiano's prime works, the likeness of Julia Gonzaga (painted for her lover, the aforenamed cardinal), but this assumption is now discredited. Other portraits include those of Marcantonio Colonna, Vittoria Colonna, Ferdinand marquis of Pescara, Popes Adrian VI, Clement VII and Paul III, Sanmicheli, Anton Francesco degli Albizzi and Pietro Aretino. One likeness of the last-named sitter is in Arezzo and another in the Berlin gallery.[1]

Partial anthology of works

Portrait of "Dorotea"
Holy Family (c. 1520), Burgos Cathedral.


References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Rossetti 1911.
  2. ↑ Williamson 1912.
  3. ↑ http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/s/sebastia/lazarus.html
  4. ↑ http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectId=716128&partId=1
Attribution

External links

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Wikisource has the text of a 1920 Encyclopedia Americana article about Sebastiano del Piombo.
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