The Raising of Lazarus, painted by Sebastiano Luciani (1485-1547) – known after 1531 as Sebastiano del Piombo, when Pope Clement VII gave him the ecclesiastical office of Piombatore, which authorised him to wield the lead papal seal, or piombo – was the first work of art to enter the National Gallery’s collection. The decision to celebrate its acquisition coincides with the 500th anniversary of its commission in 1517.
By that time Sebastiano had been in Rome since 1511, having been brought there from Venice by the immensely rich Sienese banker Agostino Chigi to work on the decorations of the Villa Farnesina.
Sebastiano, who was associated with the recently dead Giorgione and also with Titian, was the most advanced of his generation in Venice. Chigi brought in Sebastiano to paint the Villa Farnesina as Titian was otherwise engaged, working on the frescoes of the life of St Anthony in Padua. Raphael had come from Florence to Rome in 1508 and was working on the Stanze (papal apartments) in the Vatican when Sebastiano arrived.
Personal rivalry between Michelangelo, who was completing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and Raphael is likely to have encouraged Michelangelo to offer his help in several commissions Sebastiano was working on. Michelangelo helped Sebastiano in his design for the Lamentation over the Dead Christ in Viterbo, with its massive image of the seated Virgin gazing upwards in prayer to the night sky, while the dead Christ is laid out before her, stretched on a shroud. Drawings by Michelangelo were provided for Sebastiano’s use, and the finished effect is monumental.
Sebastiano was put in direct confrontation with Raphael when they were employed by Cardinal Giulio to provide the huge finished altarpieces of The Raising of Lazarus and The Transfiguration – respectively for the Cathedral of Saints Just and Pastor at Narbonne. Raphael’s painting is more gracile than Sebastiano’s, which is more robust. The Lazarus has a gigantismo which relies on Michelangelo’s figures on the Sistine ceiling. If Lazarus were to stand up he would dominate all the other figures, including Christ.
The Michelangelo & Sebastiano exhibition is held in upstairs galleries at the National Gallery, which enables lighting to be adjusted to greater effect than in the exhibition galleries below. The Lazarus has had a new frame made for it which adds gravitas.
The concentration on Michelangelo’s relationship with Sebastiano has ensured that a good number of drawings are on display, as well as finished paintings and sculpture. For the first time in my experience, Michelangelo’s Manchester Madonna and his unfinished Entombment have made really good sense, and the Taddei Tondo, lent by the Royal Academy, is properly lit and can be seen in all its glory. It is worth visiting the exhibition for that alone.
Other sculptures are represented by casts: the Pietà from St Peter’s, the Risen Christ from Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the original marble of the Giustiniani Christ, reworked in the 17th century from Bassano Romano.
The Kingston Lacy estate’s Judgment of Solomon, by Sebastiano, has never looked better. There is a harmony to it which justifies the lengths to which the restorer Herbert Lank went towards its conservation.
The extraordinary loan from Viterbo of Sebastiano’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, with its two monumental figures, and poetical night sky is also a major reason for visiting the exhibition. Cramped in its normal display area in the Museo Civico in Viterbo, it breathes – and one has the bonus of seeing the back of the poplar panel – with its charcoal drawings. Like Sebastiano’s Fitzwilliam tondo, it shows the happy result of Michelangelo’s influence on him. A similar night sky in the Prado’s Christ Carrying the Cross (commissioned by the Spanish ambassador Don Jerónimo de Vich), once more hints at Venice. The facial type of Christ was continued into Spanish art with similar paintings by Luis de Morales (1509-1586).
Apart from a few mythologies painted early in his career, the bulk of Sebastiano’s paintings were religious. Yet he is also a superb portraitist. The donor figure in the National Gallery’s Madonna and Child with Saints and a Donor is an unusual inclusion in a religious painting – and may be one of Sebastiano’s patrons, possibly Pierfrancesco Borgherini.
Borgherini is also suggested as the sitter in another beautiful portrait from San Diego. He is displayed alongside a portrait of Michelangelo with a proposed attribution to Sebastiano. Using the theories of art historian Giovanni Morelli, it is clear that his hands – pudgy, inarticulate and insensitive – make a rejection of this attribution necessary.
The other two portraits, each of Pope Clement VII – are brilliant examples of Sebastiano’s portraiture. Both are from Naples. The three-quarter length of the vigorous, seated pope, showing a handsome man in the prime of life (he became pope aged just 45) has unfortunately darkened with time so it is difficult to make out the brilliant green behind him.
The other, just a head, and bearded after the Sack of Rome, shows how the sack and the illness he had suffered have aged him. He died in 1534 aged 56. The portrait is painted on slate, an innovation of Sebastiano, who esteemed it for the way it enhances the clarity and austerity of the painting. He also innovated painting in oil on plaster and on stone.
The last paintings in the exhibition are fragments of a huge Visitation. These are yet another reason to see the exhibition, as normally they are displayed rather discreetly at Alnwick Castle. It is fascinating to compare them with the very beautiful Visitation in the Louvre, painted circa 1518-19. That painting has radiant colours and clearly emulates Michelangelo’s monumentality. The Alnwick fragments are much darkened but have a seriousness more tender than the Louvre painting, not least because Mary is shown touching her belly to make explicit her pregnancy.
Michelangelo is a wonderful draughtsman: there is extraordinary concentration in his drawing. When Sebastiano is helped by Michelangelo he surpasses his normal potential. This is a terrific exhibition which forces you to look.
David Scrase is honorary keeper of Italian drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Michelangelo & Sebastiano is at the National Gallery, London, until June 25
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