Sebastiano del Piombo, the musician painter of the Renaissance: a monumental book on his career

Eclectic, ambitious, refined: let’s talk about Sebastiano Luciani (Venice, 1485 - Rome, 1547), better known as Sebastiano del Piombo, among the most versatile and original artists of 16th-century Venice. And it is Sebastiano’s art that is the focus of an in-depth volume by art historian Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, who specializes in Renaissance and Baroque Venetian painting. The book, entitled Sebastiano Del piombo - From Giorgione to Raphael and Michelangelo, a musician painter between Venice and Rome (1501-1511), just published by ZeL Editions ( 432 pages), returns a comprehensive analysis of the artist. Sebastiano del Piombo’s career traverses two distinct artistic worlds: on the one hand, the refined Venetian culture, where he trained under the influence of masters such as Giovanni Bellini also known as “Zuane Belin” (Venice, c. 1430 - 1516) and Giorgione (Castelfranco Veneto, c. 1478 - Venice, 1510); on the other hand, the Rome of the great patrons, a city shaped under the brilliant touch of Michelangelo (Caprese, 1475 - Rome, 1564) and Raphael (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520). In his native Venice, Sebastiano absorbed the tonalism and chromatic sensibility that characterized local painting, while in Rome he experimented with a monumental language, conditioned by direct contact with Buonarroti, with whom he established a relationship of mutual collaboration and inspiration. Only in 1511, at the invitation of the banker Agostino Chigi, did Sebastiano move to Rome: there, within the artistic scene of the eternal city, Sebastiano certainly left an indelible mark. Indeed, he knew how to integrate the richness of his Venetian training through vigorous drawing. The results? They were innovative outcomes that made him a major figure, if often overshadowed by the names of the period. His career then took a significant turn in 1531, when he received the title of papal piombator of the Apostolic Chancery, a post that undoubtedly guaranteed him financial security but led him to gradually withdraw from art. In fact, Sebastiano turned away from the practice of painting, preferring to enjoy the privileges and economic security that came with the position, as Giorgio Vasari pointed out in his majestic Lives of 1550. Born in Venice around 1485, the artist is also described by Vasari as an excellent musician, particularly skilled at playing the lute.

“He was brought up in Vinegia, and delighted continovamente in the things of love, and liked the sound of the lute admirably, indeed so much, that he played and sang in his time so divinely that he was often for that used at different musics et onoranze et ragunate di persone nobili. They say that Sebastiano in Vinegia in his early youth delighted much in music of various sorts. But because the lute can play all parts without company, that he continued, so that together with other good parts he had, he was always honored and among the gentlemen of that city for virtuoso to be known,” so writes the author in the 1547 biography Sebastiano Veniziano painter.

In any case, music was not his only vocation: only later and no longer young did he decide to pursue a career in art, training initially in Bellini’s workshop and later under Giorgione. He developed a close bond with the latter, so much so that he was considered one of his best pupils along with Titian. In 1528 he returned briefly to Venice for the wedding of his sister Andriana. Although information about his early years in Venice is scarce, this volume devotes ample space to a detailed reconstruction of that period and sheds light on new perspectives and interpretations related to the artist. The book examines the hypothesis suggested by Vasari that Sebastiano began his career as a musician and addresses a topic that has never been systematically explored: the role of painter-musicians in 15th- and 16th-century Venice. Here; it is this aspect that constitutes the core of the second section of the book, edited with the contribution of Cristina Farnetti, which examines the link between painting and music in a cultural context formed by the influence of Ottaviano Petrucci (Fossombrone, 1466 - Venice, 1539), a printer from the Marche region who, beginning in 1501, revolutionized music publishing. Petrucci’s work, with the aim of disseminating books of polyphonic music, describes an essential key to deciphering the cultural and artistic landscape of the period. Although in fact there is a lack of direct evidence associating Sebastiano with musical practice, the volume Sebastiano Del piombo - From Giorgione to Raphael and Michelangelo returns an intense and complete portrait of the social and artistic context in which he operated and delves into the relationships between painters, musicians and patrons. Also of particular interest is the analysis of themusical iconography that developed in Venice in the first two decades of the 16th century.

As for Sebastiano, he too must have been well versed in music (he is repeatedly referred to as a “painter/musician” in the book), and some features of his style and pictorial production evoke the musical atmosphere of Venice at the time, thus suggesting an indirect link with that world. “A young painter as attracted to music as Sebastiano was then, who had entered the main city churches, would have been able to listen to sacred compositions mostly belonging to the Franco-Flemish repertoire, by then widespread throughout the Peninsula, thanks in part to the entrenchment of prominent figures such as Josquin Desprez,” Dal Pozzolo writes, and at the same time, “observing the altarpieces and polyptychs on the altars, he would have easily noticed how - for the past twenty years or so - the references to the musical sphere manifested by the painters had become more frequent, and that the recurring representation of instruments was accompanied by an increasing precision in the rendering of the finger positions and postures of the players.” But who were the figures in the artistic scene of the time who were most familiar with music? Many: among others, Giorgione with works such as Fregio di Castelfranco Veneto or the Three Ages of Man, Titian, Vittore Capaccio who painted musicians with extreme philological precision in the Baptism of the Selenites or musician angels in the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Cathedral of Koper, and Giovanni Busi, known as the “Cariani” (Fuipiano al Brembo, c. 1485 - Venice, 1547). They were the artists who most explicitly blended painting and music. What then, in this sense, is the purpose of the volume? To delve into the dynamics of exchange and influence between the personalities and to highlight how the Venetian environment, with its lively culture and penchant for innovation, represented a fertile ground for interaction between the various artistic expressions of the time. Not only that: music may have been instrumental in Sebastiano’s move to Rome, since (this is the book’s thesis), perhaps Agostino Chigi’s electrocution for Sebastiano depended on the fact that “the latter appeared to him a musician substantially different from all those to whom the patron was accustomed, professionals and amateurs alike” precisely because of his interest in the aforementioned Petrucci, who perhaps had some influence on Sebastiano’s playing.

The third section of Sebastiano Del piombo - From Giorgione to Raphael and Michelangelo focuses onSebastiano’s stylistic and artistic evolution, a subject that has attracted the attention of modern critics thanks to scholars such as Rodolfo Pallucchini, Michael Hirst, Mauro Lucco, and Alessandro Ballarin. Indeed, despite the progress made in constructing and defining his profile, several doubts continue to exist about his early works and their chronology. Here, then, is proposed a particularly good sequence of Sebastiano’s works: a sequence that traces a path from 1505 (the year in which his first painting is documented), to 1511, the year, precisely, of his definitive move to Rome. In the first period of the sixteenth century, anticipated earlier, Sebastiano established his own artistic practice characterized by a synthesis of Venetian heritage and Roman impressions. The link between the two traditions, both cultural and artistic, therefore gave rise to an artistic quest that would find its full expression only in later years. A key element of the analysis is the complex relationship between Sebastiano and Giorgione, a central figure in his education. Vasari and Marcantonio Michiel, a literary scholar, art collector, and particularly reliable source, confirm their influence. Both speculate that Sebastiano collaborated with Giorgione and Vincenzo Catena after leaving the atelier of the master Bellini. Among the works from that period, the doors of the organ of the church of San Bartolomeo made in 1508 represent an important moment in his career, of great value, significance, but above all the beginning of his creative autonomy. Also not to be forgotten is the altarpiece in the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo, a masterpiece also described by Vasari and Sansovino.

Such a perspective also makes it possible to frame three Madonnas attributed to Giorgione that could testify, at different stages of stylistic evolution, to Sebastiano’s presence alongside the master. For the first two the attribution remains a plausible possibility, while for a third the hypothesis takes on a higher degree of probability. This conclusion is based on an intuition of Rodolfo Pallucchini formulated in 1935, later deepened in the volume dedicated to Luciani in 1944 and further developed by Sydney Freedberg, both in summary form in his Painting in Italy 1500-1600 and in greater detail in the essay dedicated to the young Sebastiano. The first is the Madonna and Child or Reading Madonna dated 1505 and housed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. In the 18th century the work was attributed to the Castelfranco master when it was part of the Duke of Tallard’s collection. The Giorgionesque attribution was actually accepted by most scholars. The only authoritative voice to the contrary was that of Jayne Anderson, who believed it to be the work of an anonymous Bellini-trained artist influenced by the Georgian style of 1506. If, however, we consider the painting technique and the harmony of the Virgin with the figure of the Allendale Nativity or Adoration of the Shepherds Allendale of 1500 and preserved in Washington, the idea that such a work could have been made in Venice without the involvement of the Giorgionesque workshop seems unlikely. It is more a work of rare beauty, bathed in light, displaying an almost pre-Impressionist freedom of form. Similarly to Palma the Elder, author of a panel with a similar composition preserved in Berlin, Giorgione drew inspiration from a woodcut by Hans Burgkmair, taking up characteristic details such as the tasseled cushion.

In truth, the use of a visual source of German origin would actually be consistent with Sebastiano’s habits, known precisely for adopting graphic materials from the German tradition. A closer analysis revealed qualitative contradictions and raised doubts about the percentage of autography. All this suggested the intervention of an assistant. The X-ray, already interpreted in 1978 by Ludovico Mucchi, supports the idea of an overlapping of hands, proposing the hypothesis that the second hand could be Sebastiano’s, with the collaboration being around 1506, perhaps in conjunction with the painting of the Three Philosophers of 1509. The pictorial quality of the work, together with its affinity to the Benson Holy Family (1500) also preserved in Washington, makes it unlikely that it was made without the involvement of Giorgione’s workshop. The hypothesis that Sebastiano may have collaborated with Giorgione on some works seems legitimate, considering the similarities already pointed out by Freedberg, such as that between the figure of Jesus in the panel of the Reading Madonna and that present in the Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine and John the Baptist or Sacred Contemplation of 1505 (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia). Although the doubt regarding collaboration is not demonstrable, the possibility that Sebastiano contributed to the execution of some parts of the work is quite credible, especially given the stylistic similarities and the conservation conditions that changed some features, such as the face of the Virgin. As for the Sacred Conversation, the scene depicts the Virgin seated with the Child Jesus on her thighs, while the two saints, Catherine of Alexandria and John the Baptist are placed at the sides. Baptist points to the cross and foreshadows the future Passion of Christ and emphasizes the dramatic contemplative tone of the scene. The light that elevates the characters and the window that opens to the landscape contribute to a totally harmonious composition. In addition to this, the scene thus illuminated also uncovers landscape details that recall those in the background of Giorgione’s Three Philosophers. All this thus confers a stylistic continuity between the works.

Among the volume’s main novelties is a recovery for Sebastiano del Piombo’s beginnings , namely a panel preserved in a private collection and depicting a Young Woman in profile half-length, presented for the first time in Dal Pozzolo’s book, which is very similar to a similar work attested as early as the 19th century, previously attributed to Vincenzo Catena and in 2016 assigned to Sebastiano del Piombo. In the volume, Dal Pozzolo returns the latter work to Catena and believes that the work first accounted for in the volume is instead the work of Sebastiano: they are so similar that perhaps the same cartoon was used. In 2020, thanks to the willingness of the owners, the two works were compared and it emerged that both specimens demonstrate an early 16th-century Venetian origin, were born in the same environment, and that the slight stylistic dissimilarities (the unpublished one denotes a deeper gaze and a less gracile plastic construction of the hand) suggest two different hands: the higher quality work would therefore be to be assigned to a more sensitive painter such as Sebastiano was, an attribution also comforted by comparison with later works, such as the St. John Chrysostom altarpiece (and in particular the figure of St. Catherine).

As for doubtful works, the author of the volume expresses caution about the Shepherd with Flute from Wilton House (a subject variously replicated: the English exemplar is the one of the highest quality and, if it were by Sebastiano, it would be his first known evidence of musical iconography), as well as on the Horn Player in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, while the possibility of autography is discarded for the Berlin Ceres , considered a copy despite the fact that even in the recent past several leading scholars have defended the authorship of Sebastiano, as well as for the Visitation in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, believed to be the work of Sebastiano’s circle, perhaps of his heir Giovanni Cariani, to whom the book devotes an entire chapter, and then heads to the conclusion with in-depth analyses of the famous Roman masterpieces.

The volume takes what might be called a reformist approach. Combining multidisciplinary perspectives, the chapters address key issues through a detailed analysis of the works, historical sources and cultural context in which Sebastiano operated. Particular emphasis is given to his relationships with well-known figures of the time, such as Isabella d’Este, Agostino Chigi and Andrea Antico, whose influences were decisive in shaping his path both artistically and humanly. In addition to delving into various aspects of the figure of Sebastiano del Piombo, the study also presents a sharp depiction of an era marked by a strong creative ferment and a continuous language between different disciplines.

Sebastiano del Piombo, the musician painter of the Renaissance: a monumental book on his career

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.